LIFE LESSONS FROM LOVE ISLAND, or, THE JOEY ESSEX EFFECT. BY SANDRA HARRIS.
LIFE LESSONS FROM LOVE ISLAND, or, THE JOEY ESSEX EFFECT.
BY SANDRA
HARRIS. ©
Oh God, I love LOVE ISLAND. I love watching it,
discussing it with my kids afterwards, thinking about it when I go to bed and
then going on Twitter when I wake up to see what the millions of fans thought
about the previous night’s episode. It’s not even my guilty pleasure any more;
I’m quite open about that the fact that I practically live for it during the
months of June and July.
We’ve reached the
halfway mark in the show and it’s making me reflect on the morals and ethics (and
carnal forebearance?) of some of the contestants. Well, one of the
contestants in particular, a tanned, muscular thirty-three-year-old bloke called Joey Essex.
Sound familiar? That’s because he is familiar.
He’s been a reality television star since 2011, when he
appeared on popular television show, THE ONLY WAY IS ESSEX. Since then,
he’s been on pretty much every reality television show except THE X FACTOR.
He has his own range of hair products and he’s made numerous television and
personal appearances.
He's had various girlfriends but, when he walked through the
iconic heart-shaped doors of LOVE ISLAND in June 2024, he was adamant
that, now he's getting on a bit, he really does want to find the girl of his dreams, something that’s
eluded him in his life thus far.
Since coming to Love Island, he’s found true love twice
in the first month, lol. He first coupled up with a feisty Scouser called
Samantha, telling her he had feelings for her and everything, while strangely
not kissing or cuddling her or engaging in the ‘Public Displays of Affection’
or ‘PDAs’ the other islanders go in for.
The utterly starstruck ‘Smamfa’ made it perfectly clear that she was keen to get her
manicured little mitts on ‘Joey Essex’ the brand, a game-plan that fell apart
when the stunningly beautiful Grace, a truly knockout blonde, waltzed into the
villa and it was revealed that she was in fact Joey’s ex-girlfriend, with whom
he had ‘unfinished business,’ a phrase that struck fear into Smamfa’s heart.
Smamfa, feeling she was onto a loser here, deliberately sat
back and let Grace steal Joey out from under her nose because she felt like she
couldn’t compete with their ‘history.’ Joey was very disrespectful to Smamfa
too, sleeping in the Hideaway with Grace when he was supposed to be sharing a
bed with Smamfa. What a rotter. The newly-single Smamfa was dumped from the
villa in a cruel and heartless move that was all just ‘part of the game.’
How Samantha must have crowed, from the comfort of her own
home, when, roughly a week later, Joey did the exact same thing to Grace that
he’d done to Smamfa; namely, binned her off for a newer model, a ‘bombshell’
called Jessy, who’s certainly pretty, but not drop-dead-gorgeous like Grace.
(‘Bombshell’ is the name of a new ‘boy’ or ‘gel’ who
comes into the villa at a different time to the main contestants; they have the
right to ‘steal’ a boy or girl of their choice from one of the other
contestants. Bombshells are exciting because they can cause uproar, jealousy
and fighting in the villa.)
Jessy ‘steals’ Joey from Grace, who is apoplectic. Joey, who is adept at telling one woman one thing and another woman something else, just like he did with Smamfa and Grace, is thrilled to be ‘stolen,’ though he pretends not to be so as not to piss off Grace. I’m so glad we’ve hooked up again, this was meant to be, he’d be telling Grace while informing Smamfa that he still had ‘very strong feelings for her.’ Smamfa was confused and deeply hurt by the time she left the villa.
The Twitter fans of LOVE ISLAND seem to think that
Joey will cheat on Jessy the minute the six gorgeous CASA AMOR girls
swan in to the villa in tonight’s show. A man who cheated once will cheat
again, they say, and I do believe that.
‘You lose ‘em how you get ‘em’ is a saying I learned today, and that
also seems true, particularly of Grace, who lost Joey the way Smamfa lost him,
the minute someone new and shiny walked through the villa doors.
Seeing this has helped me to solve the conundrum that has
long puzzled me; how could, say, footballer Ashley Cole cheat on his wife
Cheryl Cole, at one time one of the most beautiful women in the world?
The answer to the conundrum? Because someone else came along, a
novelty, someone who was a new toy to play with for a bit. They needn’t even
have been better-looking than Cheryl, which anyway would have been difficult;
they just needed to be different and new. This explains why even gorgeous
models and famous actresses get cheated on; men are like magpies. They simply cannot
resist the allure of the new and shiny.
Joey Essex is living proof that a man who’ll cheat on a woman
to get with you will, sooner or later, cheat on you to get with another
woman, or even to go back to the original woman, the one they cheated on to get
with you. This has happened to me and, though it clearly shouldn’t have, based
on what we’ve just been discussing, I was shocked to my core by it.
Why should it have been such a surprise to me? Why was I
shocked by the fact that a man I knew to be a cheat had cheated on me? I know
the answer to this. It’s because I never expected him to do it to me. I
thought I was special, different. Nope! Wrong again.
There might be some guys out there reading this who are
getting annoyed because they don’t cheat and don’t think they ever would. Fair
enough, but I believe these men to be in the minority. Am I being unfair to
men? Maybe, but then again, maybe not. I’d love to be wrong about this but,
sadly, I don’t think I am.
The women on Love Island's Twitter thread have basically said
that the philandering Joey Essex, who says one thing to one woman and something
else to another, is the reason women should ‘fear men.’ Certainly, he makes me
not want to trust them. And the practised ease with which he lies and tells the
female islanders what they want to hear does kind of make me fear him,
and men like him, of which there are more than a few.
Anyway, there’s a whole glorious month left of the summer’s
favourite show, a whole month for Joey to get even more entangled in the web of
deceit and falsehoods he’s been carefully crafting for himself since he entered the villa
as a ‘bombshell.’ (Some people say he shouldn’t even be in the show as he’s
a professional reality TV star and not an ordinary Joe Soap.)
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