Love Island's unlikely lesson: Chastity and faithfulness are back
Love Island, ITV2's answer to Big Brother (but in bikinis) came to a somewhat anti-climactic end with Jack Fincham and Dani Dyer winning the public vote by 79.6 per cent.
Seemingly, this anticlimax has been attributed to the fact that the couple have been together since the beginning. What was perhaps more shocking was their lack of membership of the islanders' elite club.
Monday evening saw the end of eight weeks of our daily Love Island fix, with the nation's favourite sweethearts taking away the cash prize in a landslide win against three other couples. The show is set in a villa in the remote hills of Majorca, which becomes home to several young people, all looking to find love. With entertaining challenges, public votes, 're-couplings' and a few red herrings, the winning couple is chosen by the public, often for having the closest bond, being the most entertaining or overcoming the most adversity.
This series has faced a range of criticisms, from accusations of colourism to sizeism. It is true that the contestants have seemingly only represented a small segment of society. The toned, tanned and in some cases, not entirely life-like contestants spend almost their entire day in the villa in revealing swimwear. We do not see them eat or read or sightsee like any other holidaymaker. Instead, they discuss exes, sexual encounters and 'grafting' for someone's attention.
One particular conversation that often occurred was a discussion on the activities of the night before. Being on national television means that intimate encounters take place in dark corners and stolen moments. Sometimes, as the contestants found, they were only able to 'do bits'. And so, the phrase of the series was born: those who had 'succeeded' were accepted into the 'do bits society'.
However, the winning couple was unique. They were not admitted to the 'do bits society', they did not alarm the night vision camera in the Love Hideaway and they remained faithful to each other from the first episode to the last. So shocking was this fidelity that one of the first questions the couple were asked in their winning interview was: 'When are you going to do bits?'
Since then they have been hounded by questions about their sex lives and their commitment to one another. Dani told The Daily Star, 'The other people having sex in the villa didn't bother me' and spoke to the Sun about her grandparents' chastity before marriage.
So is chastity now in vogue? It seems that Twitter is split. While a letter in the Catholic Herald describes the programme as a live action exploitation of women, others found Jack and Dani's dedication to one another endearing and admirable. It seems that fidelity is becoming attractive, and is being noticed by Love Island viewers.
We do not know the religious preferences of this couple, or any of the Love Island couples. Unsurprisingly, this was not a topic of conversation that the contestants shared around their private pool. However, Jack and Dani's popularity, and the unpopularity of the less consistent contestants, demonstrates a real interest in faithful and perhaps chaste relationships.
Now outside of the public eye, to an extent, the couple must now begin to define what their relationship means going into the future. Since landing back in the UK, Jack has hinted to press that the couple will be married next year. He has also joked that their new home together, which they will move into immediately, will provide a more meaningful space in which do 'do bits'.
Regardless how they now spend their private time, they have raised a question for society. Can and should we be engaging with the outside world using our bodies, when our relationships are based on much deeper understandings of ourselves? Has chastity been proven to be sexy? Perhaps we have to wait until series five to find out.
Nina Mattiello Azadeh studied music and philosophy and was a Faith in Politics media intern in 2016. She has a keen interest in interfaith relations, social action and is a classical ballet dancer. Follow her on Twitter @Ninamataz