The Guardian on Love Island and male vulnerability

[Quartz]

The Guardian has an interesting little piece on the TV show Love Island.

It’s about as deep as a puddle in a summer drought, the last place on Earth you’d expect to find men’s innermost feelings laid bare.

…

But you’d need a heart of stone not to be moved by the sight of the lads earnestly comforting a distressed Alex, telling him he’s got a “great personality” and that it’s good to be smart even if it’s doing him no favours right now.

…

When young men hit the headlines, it’s so often in a threatening context: as sexual predators and perpetrators of violence, gang members and radicalised terror suspects, internet trolls and violent incels. Toxic masculinity evidently is a problem, one we too often shy away from naming.

But there is another story that isn’t told enough, because it’s the kind of story the media are badly equipped to tell: the one where nothing much happens. Stuff doesn’t go dramatically wrong. Nobody dies. There is no news. Perfectly nice boys make mistakes but grow up into perfectly nice men, capable of dealing maturely with disappointment, with lives every bit as real as those that make the news.

[Robot_Arm]

An interesting article. I haven’t watched this show, or any of its American equivalents, but this is a perspective on them that I haven’t seen before.