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The latest season of Winter Love Island might have recorded the lowest viewing figures since series two of the original series, but you would be remiss for not realising given how much chatter there is on social media. From Shaq’s crocs to the girl’s exquisite choice in accessories, our feeds have been filled with commentary since Monday evening.
Look to Google Trends though and you’ll see a very different picture of the public imagination – and unfortunately, it’s all painfully familiar searches we see year after year. This morning, ‘Tanyel Love Island before surgery’ was a breakout search term up 300% with various versions of the phrase ‘Tanyel Revan before and after’ coming up as seven of the top 14 searches around the new Love Island star.
So far on the show, Tanyel hasn’t openly spoke about cosmetic treatments or plastic surgery, but her regular references to her ‘bunda’ seem to have viewers convinced she’s had a BBL. On social media, Tanyel is actually very open about her cosmetic treatments, tagged in a number of Instagram videos that show her getting lip filler, fat dissolving treatments in her chin and permanent makeup on her eyebrows. In fact, she told OK! Magazine that she had the classic Love Island makeover before entering the villa with The Mirror reporting that her range of treatments would cost up to £4,500 – although it sounds like she got friends and family discount…
‘So luckily, my best friends are all like in aesthetics, beauty and hair,’ Tanyel revealed. ‘So, I'm sorted, I'm quite lucky with that. I had like my Botox, my fillers, everything topped up. My hair done, what else did I get done? Semi-permanent makeup, my lips, my eyebrows - ombre brow. Other than that, everything else wasn't really planned.’
Tanyel being open about her work is refreshingly honest, but frankly the continued obsession with how the Love Island girls looked before cosmetic treatments is getting old. Every year we see the same searches, with Ekin-Su Cülcüloğlu and Coco Lodge falling foul to it last year and Faye Winter and Sharon Gaffka the year before. Typically, the searches for the Love Island contestants faces or bodies before surgery are indicative of sexist social media trolling – some intending to find pictures of them purely to put the girls down about how they looked before or not being ‘natural’ now.
With Ekin-Su, it sparked vile commentary about how she should ‘act how she used to look’ as soon as viewers took a disliking to her having any sense of confidence or slight ego. While Tanyel is yet to be subject to such a wave of hatred, we don’t doubt that if she were to even remotely step a foot wrong in the villa the first insult trolls would resort to is her list of face-altering treatments.
Ultimately, the existence of these ‘before and after’ searches every year around Love Island perpetuates the obsession with judging women based on how ‘natural’ their beauty is. Tanyel is beautiful, full stop – trolls needn’t resort to seeking out before and after pictures of her in some kind of ludicrous ‘gotcha’ moment.