Was Love Island A Feminist Show?

Like most young adults, I was hooked on Love Island, but while I was watching I couldn’t help thinking about its anti-feminist undertones and so I’ve finally compiled them all and I’m ready to ruin the world’s favourite show. Sorry in advance.

Diversity Fails: When will the media learn that adding one Black person doesn’t instantly make a show diverse. It’s 2017 and still blindingly obvious that the producers have gone ‘ooh looks a bit like a box of Jacob’s crackers at the moment – let’s add Marcel to prevent bad reviews.’ Usually critics of diversity say ‘well maybe the white heterosexual cis person was just the most qualified for the job’ but that doesn’t work here because you literally just need swimwear and a summer without plans to qualify for the show, which I’m sure many People of Colour, members of the LGBT+ community and those with different nationalities all had too.

The Frigid/Slag Divide: Jonny broke up with Camilla after four weeks because she hadn’t done more than kiss him. Seriously? Four weeks really isn’t that long and it sends such a strange message to girls watching the show who could start feeling pressure to washing machine after the first date in case their partner dumps them. Also, why are we placing the ‘frigid’ label on Cam when actually it could be Jonny’s fault – maybe all his dick went into his personality so there wasn’t much left down there for her to play with? The possibilities are endless. Then on the other end of the spectrum you’ve got an internet calling Amber a slag because she had sex a few times (and one of them involved the instant aphrodisiac of a captain’s hat so we can’t even blame her for that one). Ladies! We can all do this whole love thing at our own speeds. There is no morally right way – let’s drop the labels.

Valentine’s Gifts I Don’t Get

I don’t really have an opinion on Valentine’s Day- most likely because my uranium heart is only capable of loving myself and The Great British Bake Off- but when it comes to gifting I’m like the present police. I’ve noticed that on V-Day people are exchanging gifts that you’d need a PhD in Cringe to understand, so I thought I’d compile a list of pressies that I don’t get (both physically and metaphorically):

P.S. If you received any of the things on this list then I still love you (unlike, perhaps, your partner) (that was a joke) I just had to write something Valentine related and this is the first thing that came to mind xo

Giant Teddy Bears: Don’t get me wrong my Build a Bear was pretty much my only friend up until 2011- if only they had some kind of human Build a Bae version eh- but she wasn’t the size of a baby elephant. I look at men lugging huge, stuffed animals through town and can’t help but think about the custom made IKEA storage solution they’ll need just to home it. Then once it’s in your house, other than recreating your first date to Chester Zoo, what’s its actual purpose? Surely, your other half will just end up cuddling it more than you, in order to get value for money. The impracticality is beyond me.

CDs: They’re just a bit vintage now, yknow. Make them a Spotify playlist available offline or something instead.

Bra Shopping Struggles

Bras are pretty weird. I don’t know who decided that women were going to add ‘sitting their chest fat in cotton breast-hammocks’ to their dressing routine but it’s now become a well-established part of our lives. However that doesn’t make transitioning into the world of bras any easier.

Nowadays I’m more of a bralette-on-a-weekday-free-the-nipple-on-a-Friday kinda gal, and perhaps this is due to the awkwardness of shopping for actual bras as a tween. Although now I’m pretty comfortable buying anything from granny pants to lingerie (however I do draw the line at those Lovehoney pants that have a hole in the bum) it hasn’t always been this way, so after the success of my A cup post, I thought I’d treat you to another highly traumatic relataboob struggle: bra shopping.

The Size System: The problem with growing boobs (not that I’d know) is that it all happens at a rate that takes you from aged 10-11 vests to the world of ‘letter and number-beginning-with-30’ combination before you’ve had time to raid Waterstones and find the Puberty for Dummy’s guide.  Is DD smaller than a D? Is 36 how old you have to be to wear the bra? Can I just hibernate in my vests a little longer until I work this completely random system out?

A Girl’s Guide to Summer BS

Summer has officially hit Britain- and so has all the BS that comes with it. Luckily, we can navigate this together, and with the help of my incredible new illustrator, name twin and Twitter bestie, Jesse Howarth who’s going to be saving you from witnessing my awful blog photos as much as she can. You can follow her on Twitter here or Instagram here and be sure to give her lots o’ luv in the comments because she is Queen Babe.

The Bikini Buying BS: Despite what the Black Eyed Peas soundtracked shopping montage in every rom com tells us, bikini buying is impossible. Not only do shops seem to stop stocking them by August aka when I need one, but they’ve starting doing this ‘set’ business. My body is not a set, it’s a custom made ASOS marketplace order, so please don’t tell me that the size 8 bottoms will fit my size 12 arse simply because I need a size 8 top. Even the top sizing system alone makes no sense- like, what’s a size 10 cup? I don’t waltz into an M&S bra fitting expecting to be measured as an ‘8’ so why do this with bikini tops? In fact, why not just make bras waterproof and save the agro.

Art by Jesse Howarth

The Shaving BS: If summer doesn’t already leave you panicked at the prospect of removing all bodily hair, Veet have gone and added to the pressure with their BS new advert*.

Boobylicious

Like 72.9% of the time my experience as a woman is like the bit in Lush Life where Zara Larsson goes ‘yeaaaaaahh’ really passionately before the third chorus- the rest of the time, however, is sadly less magical. You see the problem comes when, as a massive advocate for free the nipple, breastfeeding in public and general boob related antics, I have to admit that that is the only massive part about me. Especially biologically. Because I have no boobs. And even though I’ve learnt to appreciate what I’ve got (which didn’t take too long because realistically there’s not a lot there) as the queen of complaining I couldn’t resist a cheeky hopefully #relatable post in order to try and find my people in a world of DDs.

The Small Boob Struggles

Lost at C I always see posts about girls having no boobs and the introduction will read something like ‘honestly, I can’t bear being a C, they’re just so tiny’ and I feel a metaphorical tear roll down my poorly contoured cheeks (the struggles of not being Kim K) because since when was C not goals? Obviously, you have a right to be unhappy because we’re all miserable here but, do you really have to rub that much salt into the wound when you’re at least 2 sizes bigger than me? I mean, come on, Beyoncé is a C.

Boob Clap

As Charli XCX famously put it: “Boob Clap the sound from my bra the beat goes on and on and on.”

Or maybe that was the alternative version….anyway.

Today we’re talking boobs. Breasts. Melons. Flumjunkers (don’t ask who contributed that one, but he was a he and over 45). Hooters. Knockers. Cups. Jugs. Fleshy organs. And any other cringey name that skates around what they really are- weird. Is it just me finding it completely absurd that women (and men that shop at Jacamo) are given the anatomy version of marshmallows that hibernate on chests in order to feed offspring,  be deleted from Instagram and have our ‘Girl Score’- sadly, this is an actual thing- increased the further down the alphabet your bra size goes? This system doesn’t seem very fair. Let’s discuss our boobylicious (I am in physical pain for writing that but we must suffer for crappy puns) existence: