Love Island has an age problem – but it’s not what you think

I hate myself for watching it, but we are all a product of our own chaotic desires, aren’t we? And so, once again, I surrender myself to Love Island. Only this year, my sense of gladiatorial interest has been piqued – AND IT’S ONLY WEEK ONE – by the furore that’s cropped up over the show’s eyebrow-raising age gap relationships.

Viewers (and I will happily call myself one of those) have been complaining online, urging the show to impose a minimum age restriction after noticing the “mad” gaps between Michael Owen’s daughter Gemma, 19, who sparked the hashtag #shesnineteen on episode one, and self-titled “Italian stallion” Davide, who’s 27.

The eight-year gap may not sound like a big deal, but what about when it’s pointed out that at the start of the pandemic, Gemma was only... sixteen? Exactly. It’s a bit... well, gross, isn’t it?

And it’s a shame, it really is, because it almost started well. The show’s producers appear to have learned from previous mistakes, and this year, the line-up of young, bronzed hopefuls contains a smidgen more diversity with its first ever deaf contestant, Tasha Ghouri (though there are already concerns that she is being judged for her seemingly “invisible” disability). There’s also been an apparent effort not to reduce the entire show to being basically all-white for once – the contestants even went through “inclusion training” before flying out to Mallorca.

There’s a smattering of “proper jobs” on screen as well (a paramedic, a nanny, a model, a senior microbiologist, a master’s student, a pharmaceuticals salesman, a championship dressage rider, an estate agent, a fishmonger) to break up the usual cohort of “influencers”, “vloggers” and “I’m in events” – but there’s still one big issue, and that’s the clear disparity between the show’s youngest and oldest contestants.

In fact, in a cruel and merciless twist of fate (and TV production) the grandad of the group is widely regarded by the villa residents as the hottest, the one who’s here to stir it all up. Davide is a business owner, though the precise nature of his “business” remains as mysterious as how any mortal man can have such abs.

But it’s here that ITV runs into hot water, because on the one hand you have show hottie Davide, and on the other, a girl who until just a couple of years ago was in school uniform. For Gemma’s last relationship to have ended 18 months ago, as she revealed in episode one, means she split up with her last partner when she was 17. Seventeen! Sorry, I just fainted. I barely remember being 17.

When it comes to Love Island, age has never felt so glaring. My own, theirs, yours – Gemma might well be “looking for the one” at 19, but why on earth would she want to find him (or her)? Nineteen is no age, it should be “go out with your mates, play stupid games, get drunk and tell your best friend you love them, still sleep with a favourite teddy, go home to your mum and dad’s for dinner on Sundays”. Nineteen should be all about getting a regrettable tattoo, drinking alcopops, cheap holidays with your mates, first jobs, university freshers’ week, terrible music taste like liking Ed Sheeran and not being remotely sure what you want to do “when you grow up”, and that’s OK.

Age might also explain the dire conversation skills, as witnessed in those “stuff your own hand in your mouth and eat it” moments on screen: “Both our names begin with I!” Ikenna said to Indiyah in episode one. “And we’ve both only had one relationship! That is weird – don’t you think that’s weird?”

Oh, bless you my sweet, sweet boy, for it’s not weird, actually, it’s not weird at all because you are CHILDREN. Children. And this, you see, is entirely where the producers of the show are going so wrong.

It makes me want to weep, because I want to love it – want to sink into it like last year, to worship at the altar of skyscraper heels, cut-out dresses featuring substantial underboob, cheap Prosecco and “OMG you look stunnin’!” and “oh interesting” when someone says they’re studying “strength and conditioning”, and someone else pretends they know exactly what it is, but they don’t, because it sounds made up, and probably is.

I want to prostrate myself at the pre-recorded feet of those who ask within two minutes of meeting each other what their “favourite sexual position is”, and actually have an answer for that – have an actual answer based on an actual bird of prey, an actual answer they can actually blurt out completely off the cuff like it’s some ancient lore that’s been passed down for centuries, generation to generation, around a fire: the mysterious (yet uncomfortable-sounding) “broken eagle”.

I want to revel in my own, sordid television debasement; pledge allegiance to the cult of endlessly strapped bikinis that wouldn’t look out of place at Torture Garden, the ones that make you look like a deckchair, or a sun lounger. You know! The kind your mum and dad have in the back garden: white, cumbersome, plastic-slatted. Those kind of tan lines from those kinds of bikinis – the ephemeral, iconic Love Island hardcore bondage bikinis.

And I want to weep, I really do, once again with joy as I watch along while reading people’s tweets of the show – because that’s the main draw, let’s be honest, Jason Okundaye’s Love Island tweets last year were better than any singular episode.

Instead, I’m left wincing as the contestants speak to each other like ancient woodland sages: “Aye”, they intone. “My last serious relationship was a year and a half ago.” They sigh, shake their heads at the ravages of time, the severity of it, the bitter unfairness of silly human mortality, of temporality; nod as they ponder the last epoch, the dark ages, the unthinkable time they last went on a date. They devastate each other with sordid confessions of precisely how long they’ve been single, when some of them have barely passed out of puberty yet. It doesn’t feel right, it feels a bit grim – and it’s ruined it for me.

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On Twitter, someone floated the idea of Love Island for “bitter divorcees” – and I couldn’t agree more. Stop with the teenagers who haven’t had time to do anything yet, who haven’t (really) got many tales to tell, because they haven’t been alive long enough to have stupid adventures like The Great Tequila Disaster of 2016, or That Time I Nearly Got Kidnapped On The Back Of A Motorbike In Vietnam.

Bring on the thirtysomethings, fortysomethings and fiftysomethings instead; those who might be older, wiser, more wrinkled (yes, we’ll own it) but more confident and secure with it; the ones who might be arguably less at risk of the emotional or psychological fallout of being on a show like Love Island, because we (I must declare an interest here, being in my forties) have ourselves worked out – have worked on ourselves. We’ve had therapy, some of us might even have had children. We’ve lost count of lovers and lost people, too.

Those of us who have been married or had proper long-term relationships (not just going to the school prom with our first kiss, which is all Gemma has technically had time to do) have so much more to offer because, well, we know what love is, and what it isn’t. We’ve lived a little. We have something to say. Age gaps don’t mean a thing when you’re past your third decade, but they do mean a lot before that.

Love Island is perfect for older people like me. Just forget the bondage bikinis.