Last night, Love Island returned to our screens with A LOT of twists. From the public choosing who coupled up with who, to the first male bombshell in years, viewers appear to have mixed feelings about all the changes. But there’s one person they appear to have made their mind up on already: Gemma Owen.
The 19-year-old dressage rider was all anyone could talk about watching the episode, her name trending as memes began flying about her supposed ‘attitude’ problem. Gemma seems to have offended viewers when she dubbed fellow contestant Luca Bish’s surname ‘unfortunate’ and had a painfully tense conversation with her new partner, Liam Llewellyn. Now, a mere 90 minutes into the season, everyone is making judgements about Gemma – and mocking comments about how she must be bursting to tell the other Islanders that her dad is football legend Michael Owen.
Naturally, there’s a lot to unpack. First, the obvious: like every season, #BeKind appears to have been forgotten the second the Love Island soundtrack blared from our TVs. Mixed opinions are expected of any reality TV star, but the pile-on for one person and subsequent vile DMs Gemma’s family will no doubt now be fielding on her Instagram is never acceptable. Second, Gemma is a literal teenager. When Covid started, she would've been 16-years-old... let that sink in.
Not only should that fact give some pause to troll her, but it should also make us question: should Love Island really be letting 19-year-olds on the show? That's perhaps a debate for another day, but it's certainly something to consider before judging her behaviour - who can truly say there were a well-rounded, mature adult with perfect emotional reactions to every dating dilemma at 19?
Beyond that, everyone appears to have a very short memory about prior contestants. Remember last year when Chloe Burrows first entered the villa and she was ripped to shreds for an out-of-context quote during her VT? And in 2019 during Amber Gill’s first few weeks when the public decided she was a ‘bitch’ for taking her time to date Michael Griffiths? There have been countless women on Love Island that went from public enemy number one to fan-favourite in the space of one episode - surely we should’ve learned from that by now.
The problem with public commentary around Love Island is that many refuse to give contestants the benefit of the doubt. When you approach Gemma’s behaviour with a more open mind, much of what she said and done last night can be easily explained. Take the conversation with Liam, for example: the man was talking to a professional athlete (whose father also happens to be an ex-professional athlete) about his education in ‘strength and conditioning’ and yet somehow assumed she wouldn’t know what those extremely basic words meant - pushing her to explain - presumably so he could 'flirt' by mansplaining sports science to her.
Gemma caught on immediately, refused to pander to the line of questioning and instead turned the tables by asking if he had ever succeeded in his own professional football aspirations. It was a classic dating power play – and honestly quite impressive for a 19-year-old – and personally, reminded me of all the times men assume women don’t actually understand sports, so deem it appropriate to test you on it (‘OKAY WELL IF YOU LIKE FOOTBALL SO MUCH NAME THE BLOOD TYPES OF 10 PREMIER LEAGUE PLAYERS FIRST BORN CHILDREN’… you know the ones).
The conversation became even more tense when he followed her question about his football career by asking if she’d ever dated a footballer. First of all, as someone who could be interested in football all by herself, it’s obviously offensive to assume the only reason you know about the sport is because you dated a man who played it.
Given Gemma hasn’t shared who her dad is yet, she also clearly felt uncomfortable by how pointed the question was – it was like he already knew and wanted her to confess (in all likelihood he could know as she was rumoured to appear on the show for months before it aired). Liam had also JUST told her he wants to work with footballers as a career, so of course she would be unsure whether to confess about her father, knowing he would now have another less-than-genuine reason to date her beyond being on a dating show with prize money.
Watching the conversation play out with that in mind, her reaction makes perfect sense - and when you consider all of that happened before the conversation about ‘last names’, the reason she ended up offending Luca Bish also becomes clearer. Liam has already asked her a pointed football question when out of nowhere in a group of people, he asks her what her last name is. Have we ever, in Love Island history, witnessed such a strange – and obviously orchestrated – conversation?
These people barely know each other's first names before cracking on, let alone their full legal name. To me, it seemed as though Gemma immediately wanted to deflect, moving the conversation quickly onto how ‘unfortunate’ Luca’s last name was to distract anyone from following up about her own last name. Sure, it was rude - but is also pretty random that a man who works with fish has the last name ‘Bish’.
You can never be too sure of who anyone is on a reality TV show.
When you add all of this up, and consider the clips we won’t have seen, or the editing to make the show more interesting, it all amounts to Gemma being an absolutely normal girl. Of course, she may well be an arsehole – only time will tell - but that’s the thing, we have to give her time to prove to viewers who she is. Even then, you can never be too sure of who anyone really is on a reality TV show, so much outside influence goes into making these shows entertaining.
Now, this is a whole lot of deep diving for two conversations on a 90-minute episode of a reality show, but we know that the kind of public trolling Gemma received last night has done serious damage to the health and wellbeing of former contestants. So this year, let’s not let this show bring out the worst in us, let’s just enjoy the romance (if you can call it that) being back for the summer.