Does Love Island ‘influence’ in the right way?: We chat to a body positivity advocate

Does Love Island ‘influence’ in the right way?

Transcript

00:00 So at the moment my personal views are that I think it's great there are people of you

00:06 know different ethnic backgrounds which is wonderful but I think that you know from my

00:12 point of view I think they need to be more placed on diversity and what I mean by this

00:15 is people who've got visible and invisible differences. So when I talk about people with

00:21 visible differences that would be someone that looks like me, who's got a visible skin

00:24 difference, I've got vitiligo and I've got bits of white and brown across my body. Someone

00:30 with a hidden visible difference would be someone who's got something like perhaps multiple

00:34 sclerosis, it might be something like bipolar or chronic fatigue. At the moment I don't

00:41 see as much representation as I would like in terms of people who may have a form of

00:45 disability or of skin difference like myself and I think this could be highly highly positive

00:51 in terms of people going on and actually being part of an experience like this and showing

00:57 the public what it is like to actually live with their form of disability or difference.

01:03 It would be like just a really lovely way to showcase and highlight that this person

01:08 is absolutely normal and they want to feel included, they want to feel inclusive. I think

01:13 that's the whole point of this inclusiveness, inclusivity which is so so important that

01:18 just because someone's got a visual difference does that mean that they need to be set aside

01:21 and not be part of something and that's a question that you know I'd like to present

01:25 today. There's so much pressure on young people and when young people watch programmes like

01:29 Love Island they aspire to want to look like them, they want to you know behave like them

01:33 and act like them but actually what they need to start learning from from an early age is

01:38 they need to be confident in having the hair they do, having the eyes they do, having the

01:42 skin they do, having the lips they do and just starting to feel that sort of confidence

01:45 from an early age because it can really just end up quite wrong if you end up kind of being

01:52 influenced in the wrong way. So from that point of view having a diverse people it just

01:57 promotes that equality and inclusivity.