Hannah Elizabeth is a Love Island icon, let’s start there. The star of season one, the success of this series can largely be attributed to her hilarious antics and engagement to Jon Clark when Love Island first rebooted in 2014. It made Love Island THE reality show to watch back in the mid-2010s, because you never knew what to expect when the Islanders were so… authentically themselves.
When Hannah returned for Love Island All Stars then, it was a breath of fresh air into an otherwise stale format. She’s maintained her candid charm, projecting a much-needed indifference to public opinion and thus is still our favourite person to watch on the show. You can imagine our disdain then when so-called ‘fans’ of the series reacted to her return with, well, disgust.
Why disgust? Because Hannah Elizabeth has dared to age in the 10 years since she first appeared on Love Island, and well isn’t that the most offensive thing a woman can do? Now 33, the mum-of-one has been subject to vile abuse ever since she entered the villa, viewers incessantly commenting on how ‘old’ she.
‘It’s like seeing your mum in there,’ one person commented on the official Love Island Instagram. ‘You’ve got a 4year old son??? What are you doing on the show at your fossil age Hannah???’ another tweeted.
After 10 years of Love Island, naturally one has come to expect the particularly vile brand of misogynistic commentary that litters social media with every new season. Trolls tear apart the women’s looks, obsessing over whether they’ve had any surgery, and spend hours hunting down ‘before and after’ images of them to share online.
Now, they’re age-shaming too, which is particularly unfathomable given this is a series of old cast members. The show does typically feature people in their early 20s, but did viewers think that in the 10 years since it’s reboot the Islanders had frozen in time and would return as carbon copies of their former, immature selves? The whole excitement around this season is that we get to see the older version of our favourite reality TV stars, how they’ve changed overtime and what secret hook ups have occurred with each of them once their season ended.
To condemn Hannah for returning at 33 then is entirely reductive. She may be the oldest in there (although Luis Morrison and Joshua Ritchie are both 29), but are we to believe that she has somehow lost all of her value as a romantic interest since hitting 30? Is she less entertaining, less hilarious, less attractive? Frankly, if you answered yes to any of those questions, you should look within at your own internal prejudices.
So, let’s say it louder for the trolls in the back, women are just as entitled to love, and just as lovable, at 33 as they are at 23. Hannah Elizabeth is a Love Island legacy, and it’s about time she was respected as such.