The latest season of Love Island UK concluding this summer had one of the most popular personalities to enter the villa: Jasmine Müller. Previous female participants had unfortunately been labelled as ‘more beauty than brains’ and other stereotypical comments. Jasmine completely flipped this by showing her political stances and educating people on intersectional feminism which deeply surprised viewers. Now that the show is over, why was this such a shock in the first place?
Jasmine Müller, with now nearly 700K followers on TikTok, posted a video before the show about book and media recommendations on intersectional feminism and for women to ‘de-rot’ their brains. The top comments talked about how she was ‘too good for Love Island.’ On one hand, it is amazing to see her praised for how intelligent she is along with her beauty. However, it furthers this idea that women go on reality TV are less intelligent, male-centred and shallow.
While supporting Jasmine’s feminist views, fans often ended up putting other women down subconsciously. This is because the outdated idea that a woman being passionate about her views can’t possibly be interested in dating and reality TV. Her time on the show flipped this entirely and encouraged female viewers to tune in more to the show, with edits becoming viral of her that had very little to do with her love interests Kavan or Lorenzo.
While on the show, Jasmine was told by Aidan that her behaviour was ‘unattractive and off-putting.’ She was starting to be labelled a ‘pick-me’ by some audiences due to her confident nature. It was not a shock that a woman who was vocal about her opinions became controversial, as it is rare on a show such as Love Island. Behind the scenes, she faced complaints for having pro-Palestine posts on her socials and was almost removed from the show. When the show finished and Jasmine was a runner up, she featured in a GQ article titled ‘On Love and Palestine‘ – something incredibly courageous to do and another example of how strong and intelligent she is. Which is exactly what this show needed.
Having a woman embracing feminism, Palestine and her culture from growing up in a ‘house filled with matriarchs’ (a quote from Jasmine’s Substack, which I recommend – she is so articulate and her piece on her experience being on Love Island is a great read) in a show about dating and hookup culture is so inspirational. She stopped the harmful and misogynistic public opinion that all the women on the show are only focused on men, and faced the criticism gracefully about her desire to date and find love while also staying true to her beliefs. Now female viewers are reading her Substack and viewing her as a role model.
Jasmine left the show as a runner up with Kavan, but more importantly she left as an inspiration to women who want to be able to date and show off their intelligence – something that feels hard to do regularly, without it being aired on national television. With the next season of Love Island in the works, her impact will have viewers abandoning their stereotypical assumptions of the woman contestants being shallow and see them as more than just the partner of whoever they are coupled up with.