Opportunities for UK’s youth are dwindling. Time to look for nontraditional alternatives.
(Bloomberg) — Like any caring parent, I want the best possible future for my child, and that’s why I’m putting his name down for Love Island.
If you’ve spent the past few years on a desert island yourself, I’m referring to the reality TV show in which pulchritudinous young men and women are thrown together in hot weather and very little clothing and encouraged to pair off. It invites viewers to vote for their favorite couple, with the winners sharing a purse of £50,000 ($62,000).
Back on our screens for its ninth season, Love Island is beginning to look like a plausible means of getting on and getting ahead for young people, in a country where other routes to upward mobility increasingly seem blocked. We’ve heard plenty of rhetoric from politicians of both major parties about expanding opportunities, most recently with the “leveling up” agenda associated with former Prime Minister Boris Johnson, but inequalities remain obstinately intransigent.
John Golthorpe, fellow of Nuffield College, Oxford, and the granddaddy of social mobility research, told researchers preparing the government’s latest survey of the subject last year that he had detected a striking trend. He said “a situation is emerging that is quite new in modern British history, and one that could have far-reaching sociopolitical consequences. … Younger generations of men and women now face less favorable mobility prospects than did their parents, or their grandparents—that is, are less likely to experience upward mobility and more likely to experience downward mobility.”
So if I can’t scrape together school fees for my lad, or pull a few strings to get him into a leading set of chambers, I can do my best to get him a place on Love Island instead. I’ll oversee his grooming regime and take him to the barber’s for an on-trend fade haircut.
For the lucky few, an appearance on the show can lead to overnight success. Several winners have gone on to parlay their popularity into careers as celebrities and influencers. Ekin-Su Culculoglu, who won Love Island last year, can currently be seen on the peak-time TV spectacular Dancing on Ice. Kem Cetinay and Amber Davies, who were 2017’s lovebirds, are now a TV presenter and musical theatre performer, respectively. The finale of the last season drew 3.4 million viewers, and the whole series was streamed 250 million times, making it the jewel in ITV2’s crown, or perhaps its nipple-tassel. The program is tailor-made for social media, with its Generation Z participants and fan base, as well as a parade of Instagrammable fashion outfits.
One way or another, most of the commentary about Love Island concerns contestants’ looks; critics say contestants have nothing going for them but their physical charms. It’s true that the program prizes attractiveness of a conventional sort, though producers have introduced candidates with disabilities of a not immediately obvious kind: One young woman in the present lineup is partially sighted. And as producers elsewhere in television scramble to make their output more diverse and inclusive, Love Island is almost alone in current British schedules for its resolute heteronormativity. And nobody is over 30, though ITV has just announced that it’s making a spinoff, a Love Island for single parents, called The Romance Retreat.
So why would I want a child of mine to join a bunch of narcissists on a TV set who spend a lot of their time gazing into a mirror? It’s because they give over the rest of the day to strategizing, which offers life lessons to any youngster. The Love Islanders devote themselves single-mindedly to finding a partner with whom to form a power couple. At the poolside or in their shared dormitory, the sexes are almost courtly with one another, though sometimes the mask slips and one of the men will refer to someone who has caught his eye as a “bird.” No one seems to mind. Strategic bed-hopping is the name of the game, and the ultimate reverse is getting rejected, or “pied off” (as in taking a cream pie in the face). Of course, I’d expect my son to be a perfect gentleman, but a crash course in how to win friends and influence partners could come in handy in the challenging post-college job market.
Tuning in to ITV2 at 9 p.m. is like eavesdropping on the machinations of the Medicis or the Hapsburgs, except with more hair product and less inbreeding. The young men and women tell each other “I’m attracted to you” or “I feel you” in the way that princes and princesses of old once murmured promises of treaties or treasure. The islanders might not be scintillating conversationalists, but they have a keen eye for the main chance. It’s in this environment that my son can learn the ruses and stratagems, the Machiavellian moves, without which dreams of success in modern Britain remain precisely that: dreams. Or to put it in the language of HR departments, the islanders demonstrate the transferable soft skills that employers are looking for in today’s workplace.
Of course, there will be a tear in my eye as I wave my son off to the island with his wheely case of leisurewear, his tubs of body wax and family pack of penicillin. But I’ll know that I’m giving him the best start in life, and the chance to fulfill his potential.
More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com
©2023 Bloomberg L.P.