We’re only one episode into the new series of Love Island, and the show is already dividing people. The ITV2 dating show returned for its 11th series on Monday, with 12 new islanders entering the villa for a long, hot summer of love and fame. Of course, Love Island is nothing without the discourse that surrounds it, and this year’s opening episode has already prompted a disappointing reaction from fans about the ages of the contestants and whether or not they’re ‘too old’ – or look ‘too old’ – for the show.
Compared to previous years, where islanders have been as young as 19, the cast of Love Island 2024 are, on average, slightly older. The youngest boy Ciaran is 21, while the youngest girls are 24. But on social media, viewers were quick to claim that the female cast members all look a lot older than their years, which viewers chalked down to cosmetic procedures they might have undergone in the lead up to the show. ‘This is the best anti-filler advert I’ve ever seen,’ one popular tweet read, while another said, “The only thing running through my mind when they tell us their ages,” along with a clip of a man saying, ‘Why do you look 50 when you’re 24?’
Inside the villa, the contestants didn’t all help things. Patsy, the oldest girl at 29, insisted that she wasn’t going to be the mummy of the group, as if being at the top end of her twenties would mean the other islanders no longer saw her as a sexual being.
And the boys aren’t immune either. While the girls might have declared Munveer, 30, to be ‘boyfriend material’ and swooned over unexpected celebrity bombshell Joey Essex, viewers at home asked why the The Only Way is Essex star was daring to enter the villa aged 33. ‘Weird, he’s closer to 40 than some of them are closer to 30,’ one comment read.
It’s not the first time that age has been a topic of conversation on Love Island. Last summer, bombshell Charlotte, 30, had heads turning in the villa, but was forced to spend her dates talking about her age, or being told that she ‘didn’t look 30’ in words intended as a compliment.
At home, viewers said the same things of Charlotte as they said about model Hannah Elizabeth, 33, on All Stars earlier this year and as they are now about Joey, asking why they'd want to appear on the show in their 30s as if anyone over the age of 28 should transfer their applications to My Mum, Your Dad immediately. The comments imply that life stops at a young age, or that people who are older don’t deserve to go out and feel sexy. Combine this with the comments claiming that even the youngest female islanders look older than their ages, and it becomes clear that islanders – but particularly the women – can’t win.
The criticism circulating this year is particularly confusing when there’s been backlash in recent years to the show featuring much younger contestants. Who among us doesn’t remember the horror when Gemma Owen, then 19, coupled up with Davide Sanclimenti, who was eight years her senior? If we’re going to spend all summer watching these people, wouldn’t we rather they had at least started to develop their pre-frontal cortexes?
From the first episode alone, it does seem like the islanders themselves are more relaxed about age than the viewers. Patsy might have felt the need to tell Ayo that she was ‘young at heart’, but she broke another taboo when she said that she wasn’t planning on having kids anytime soon. ‘Our twenties are to be lived, don’t you think?’ Ayo responded.
It was an impressively mature response, one slightly downplayed when Patsy joked that she’d ‘only got one more left’. Here’s hoping that over a summer in the villa, she, like the viewers, will learn to chill out about everyone’s ages, and focus on what really matters: watching hot people in bikinis getting pied.