A rant about on bullying on Love Island
Love Island — where do I even start? The first weeks of the fifth series is so crammed with toxic, unhelpful and unhealthy behaviour I’m going to need subheadings to start addressing the different themes here. However it’s the general public’s reaction to this that seems badly uninformed. Uninformed about bullying, uninformed about controlling behaviour, uninformed about sexual predators.
So without further ado, subheading number one:
Amy bullying Lucie
Amy (queen bee girl) has a problem with Lucie (pretty, surfer girl).
Amy is preoccupied with where Lucie is sitting, the way she laughs, who she is talking to. Then she finds fault with it, then mutters in the girls’ and boys’ ears about there being something wrong/off about Lucie. And everyone else is swallowing her tales. When this doesn’t get Amy the attention she so desperately craves, she turns on the waterworks. Lucie was too harsh on her in the food fight. She only wants to help Lucie, to be her friend (because we all love friends who are foul to us) why can’t Lucie just…just…just… (I’m at a loss to what it is Amy does want the harmless Lucie to do, to be honest).
What does the general public (Twitter) say?
Oh, there must be something wrong with Lucie if the girls are treating her this way. No! The girls are reminding me of that bunch of hysterics in the Crucible, who start fainting and accusing people of witchcraft. It’s plain and simple mass hysteria, it exists as a human condition, Lucie doesn’t need to have done anything wrong to prompt it other than display qualities which inadvertently trigger the insecurities of the queen bee.
Lucie is not some sinister girl who does not hang around with other girls. I just see a sad, isolated girl who knows the other girls don’t like her. Why would she want to hang around with them? Also, she doesn’t have to be a girly girl. She can be any kind of girl she wants. There’s nothing suspect about a girl that is not a girly girl. It doesn’t mean she’s going to automatically steal your boyfriend. Some girls (girly girl or not) don’t do that simply because it’s the wrong thing to do, not because of any girl code! I find her rather endearing and straightforward to be honest.
And on that, Amy’s bullying is probably based in jealousy/insecurity or something but I just don’t care why, there are standards of behaviour in life and treating someone unkindly/bullying them is not on.
Joe controlling Lucie
So as if Lucie doesn’t have enough on her plate, her boyfriend in the villa is controlling and manipulating her. I put this second to the bullying from Amy, because I see him using Amy’s behaviour as another tool in his arsenal. The ways he controls her? Makes her feel guilty, makes her feel bad for spending time with the people she chooses, tells her she’s not normal, asks her to change, controls who she does spend time with. Then, when she refuses to comply, he brings out the big guns. Everyone else thinks you’re strange too. In doing this, he is normalising the bullying against her, using it to control her when his own influence is waning. He is then included and reaffirmed by the group (who are bullying her so not a good barometer) while Lucie wipes away her tears in the corner. The girl looks haunted and exhausted. She spends nearly every conversation she has with him in tears.
What does the general public (Twitter) say?
He doesn’t like Lucie hanging around with Tommy. Ah, I see. That’s all right then. He’s jealous, his feelings are understandable, so how he acts on his feelings doesn’t matter. No! His feelings are his feelings, I agree, but how he responds to them does matter! For example, if he doesn’t like Lucie hanging around with Tommy, he can sit her down like a healthy adult and tell her how it is making him feel. If she doesn’t care about how it is making him feel, perhaps he can choose not to be with her? But’s that’s not what’s happening. Instead, he is trying to bring about the change he wants by manipulating her. By making her responsible for his feelings. By making her question herself. That is abuse! Crikey, if you need any evidence just look at her. Look at Lucie.
Maura preying on Tommy
Maura arrives in the villa and hones in on Tommy, making suggestive comments and doing odd things with an ice lolly. Then, one night, she straddles him and tries to kiss him while he says no. This is not on Maura!
What does the general public (Twitter) say?
If Maura were a man she’d be thrown out. I do agree that if Maura were a man she would be thrown out of the villa for that kind of behaviour. Also, I think that her behaviour is sexual harassment, most definitely.
However, where I find these comments difficult is when people start to compare sexual harassment of a man (in this context) to sexual harassment of a woman. Does Tommy the boxer feel physically threatened in this scenario? Because that’s a big part of sexual harassment for women. They are scared. They can’t actually stop it. Women suffer more from sexual harassment than men. In public places, and in the work place. Going a step further, more than half of all women killed in 2017 were killed by their family or partners. We do not live in a world where men are constantly suffering sexual harassment from women and dying from it!
While Maura’s behaviour highlights the hypocrisy of the situation (as Tommy would be thrown out if it happened in reverse) I don’t agree with any underlying sentiment that makes out that men are the underdog here.
I really like Love Island. Until this year, I’ve been really happy to see positive female role models on it — yes — positive. Despite all the sex on TV and the attention seeking, girls in previous years have actually shown they care about each other and don’t call each other slags, and men have been called out for their bad behaviour.
This year the bad behaviour is a lot more subtle, but no one is being called out for it. I wonder about all this in the name of ‘entertainment’ therefore. The cruelty of the producers for our entertainment makes it harder to criticise the contestants when they behave badly. After all, we are the ones being entertained.
