Anyone Else Feel Positively Virginal Watching Too Hot To Handle?

Watching the Too Hot To Handle cast cry out about how horny they are, negotiating with their mates to let them 'relieve themselves' and forgoing thousands of pounds because they simply cannot wait for a kiss (the kind of kiss people ONLY do on reality TV), a fondle or even a dry hump you would think... well, you'd think they'd been deprived of sex for as long as millions people were over months-long lockdowns.

But no - some of these comments and actions come around three hours after the cast of Netflix's Too Hot To Handle have been told they can't engage in sexual activity for four weeks. If they do, they are docked money from a £100,000 prize fund. By the end of day one, they've already lost £21,000.

Honestly, every time I go for a walk around London and see couples clearly on a first date/hook-up with pure lust in their eyes, I get a warm fuzzy feeling. After a year of basically being told any love or lust was off the table, it's about TIME. Go go go! Hot Girl Summer with abandon!

But to see contestants (especially like Brit Cam Holmes) cry about blue balls (BLUE BALLS AM I 13 WHAT IS HAPPENING) or cry out in pain that if they make it to the end of the week without having sex it'll be their longest drought in their adult lives feels like it's openly taking the piss out of us. And it's not just those who have been single and unable to meet up with new partners. Those in couples too are surely looking across at each other on the couch (as they have done for the last 18 months) feeling a little shook.

To be honest, watching the way the characters talk about their rampant need for continuous sexual gratification feels like sitting for 40 minutes of being Cher from Clueless while Tai screams at you that you're a 'virgin who can't drive'.

But while I've laughed with friends about the disconnect between our own lives and these absolute horndogs, there's also a real feeling of ickiness watching the overt sexuality of some of the cast of Too Hot To Handle.

As with any series of reality TV, the second season of the show has become almost a parody of the first and has amped things up to 11. The producers claim the contestants don't know that they're starring on Too Hot To Handle, but think they are on another reality show, but the insane horniness of the contestants suuuurely gives everyone cause for suspicion around that.

Within moments of meeting, one girl is being lapdanced on the floor, and one guy seems to bite another contestant's bum? While trying best not to be po-faced - you have, after all, turned on to watch Too Hot To Handle - it all quickly starts to feel a bit not right for now.

But it's also how much the contestants' desperation for sex and ogling is played up this time - particularly the men. By the fourth episode (the second half of the series drops on June 30) the producers appear to give up any pretence as the guys all just sit together watching new female contestant Christina Carmela getting in and out of the sea, talking about her body and everything they'd like to do to her.

'Look at her, she's literally too hot to handle,' says Chase DeMoor. Peter Vigilante shouts 'BOOBIES!' (no, seriously) then adds: 'Don't leave me alone with Christina, I'll lose money.'

This pretty grim conversation goes to the heart of the issue too - that the show at its base is based on the idea of people being unable to control their sexual urges around the opposite sex. You can't be left alone?? REALLY? Taken out of the context of a 'fun' reality show and placed out in the real world, that's a narrative we need to reject if we're going to ever change our thought processes around sexual assault and the blame game. Honestly, it's a barely a step away from 'What did she expect, wearing that'.

Obviously it's a heavily edited TV show. Obviously the contestants know they can earn way more pretending (SURELY some of them are pretending) to be desperate for sex, getting more air time and landing various contracts, than winning the jackpot. And obviously, when you tune into a show called Too Hot To Handle, with a picture of a padlock across someone's bikini, you know you're not going to be getting a Feminist 101 class.

But for some reason season two of Too Hot To Handle has never seemed more out of whack with where we are - or trying to be with our views on sexual politics right now. And certainly, the screams of severe cases of BLUE BALLS within 24 hours, couldn't be further from the way we've all lived in the last year.

READ MORE: Meet Too Hot To Handle's New Contestants