With Love Island USA Season 8 coming to a close, we’re saying goodbye to a summer full of rich friendships, stylish bikinis, epic romances, and french fries… IYKYK. We’ve seen an abundance of couples that could truly last in the outside world, along with plenty that may not. Of course, fans were incredibly excited to see #Brinity, Trinity Tatum and Bryce Dettloff, take home the $100k prize by being crowned the favorite couple from this season.
What’s missing from some of these conversations, though, is the outright misogyny being aired by producers from day one. For a show targeted at young-adult women, it’s both contrary and damaging to be normalizing, and even encouraging, conversations that put down, degrade, and create harmful stereotypes around women.
Being a Girls’ Girls
What was once a harmless and endearing phrase has practically become weaponized by both the islanders and viewers online. Instead of promoting strong friendships, the term has come to be used to confine women to strict actions regarding exploring connections on the show.
We saw girls like Kenzie, who was heavily criticized online simply for exploring multiple connections across the weeks after her original partner left her. Similarly, Sol entered as a week-two bombshell and faced immediate backlash for not being a “girls’ girl” after turning a boy’s head, despite the fact that doing so is literally her job on the show. The online audience frequently expects female bombshells to prioritize a stranger’s feelings over their own spot in the villa.
At the same time, a guy like Sincere continuously misled multiple women, lied about his private kisses, and continuously played the field under the guise of “testing” his connections. Yet, the villa boys rallied to protect him under the “bro code,” and parts of the audience brushed off his behavior as standard reality TV execution.
Casa Amor
During the mid-point of each season, the villa is typically split by guys and girls, one group getting to visit “Casa Amor,” a separate villa with a brand new group of bombshells. This season, we saw the guys run off to Casa while the girls stayed at the villa. In previous seasons, there have been issues with guys getting overly excited to explore while the girls remain incredibly conservative and reserved. To even it out, Season 8 mixed it up and allowed the girls to see what the guys were saying live at Casa when they thought no one was listening.
After only 5 minutes into the Heart Rate Challenge, where the new bombshells tempted the guys with kisses and dances, we heard both Corbin and KC agreeing that they would both ditch their couples and bring new girls back to the Villa. Unfortunately, this is not a new trend.
Casa Amor works so well in ratings and with audience viewership because the producers are banking on the girls to stay loyal and the guys to run off exploring, as this leads to maximum drama when the couples are reunited. Of course, this season was no different when drama ensued after KC brought back a bombshell, like he promised, leaving his day-one couple, Aniya, single and humiliated.
Movie Night
This is another Love Island tradition designed for maximum viewership through provoking emotional reactions from the girls. This night always follows the recoupling of Casa Amor, ensuring all of the sneaky actions from the guys can be shown to the partner they’ve remained coupled up with.
This season has arguably been the hardest movie night to watch, with the most misogynistic comments on full display. Before Casa Amor, and subsequently breaking things off with Aniya, KC had a conversation with Corbin where he called Aniya a “grandma” for not wanting to do sexual acts in the bed at night, where Corbin proceeded to laugh and commiserate with him. This contributes to the dangerous standard of women needing to “put out” to please their partner and avoid repercussions.
Similarly, the two boys had a separate conversation during Casa Amor where they compared the original girls in the villa to the girls in Casa, saying it was like “high school girls compared to college girls.” What does this even mean? The fact that they felt necessary to use such language to describe women they interact with daily overtly shows their feelings and (lack of) respect towards the women.
The biggest end to movie night was clips finally revealing to Melanie the hurtful, dishonest, and shady actions from her day-one couple (in)Sincere. The night ended with Melanie in tears, screaming at him that he has never “fixed things” as he’s promised.
Body Expectations
After last season, when production brought in primarily picture-perfect girls with large followings online, there was a push to stop casting influencers and instead promote a wide range of women’s bodies and looks. However, this season we saw girls with “non-traditional” features, like Sol’s pixie cut and Jen’s mole, and there was still criticism. Many viewers online commented that Sol would look better with longer hair or Jen without her mole, completely reversing the desire for “real” looking women.
Episode after episode, there were more and more conversations surrounding practically any part of a woman’s body, yet the most we saw about the guys were their questionable tattoo choices. The double standard is not only nonsensical but also harmful. There should be no world in which anyone feels comfortable making any comment surrounding a woman’s body or aspects of herself that she cannot change.
So Why Do We Keep Watching?
In the past two years, Love Island USA has become a cultural phenomenon that many of us can’t seem to turn our heads away from. As much criticism as there has been, there is now a cult following to the show, with viewership increasing each season. While the show isn’t all negative, as we have seen real friendships both in and outside of the villa, the show’s concept begs the question: Do we actually enjoy what we’re watching, or are we desensitized to commonplace misogyny and toxic masculinity?