21 Jun 2024

Mouth to mouth / Eat this toast

Today: Julianne Escobedo Shepherd, writer, editor, and author of the forthcoming book Vaquera; and Laurie Woolever, author of Appetites, World Travel, and Bourdain: the Definitive Oral Biography.

Issue No. 103

I Have Seen Literally 533 Episodes of ‘Love Island’ and I Am Going to Watch More
Julianne Escobedo Shepherd

Move Over, Avocado Toast
Laurie Woolever

I Have Seen Literally 533 Episodes of ‘Love Island’ and I Am Going to Watch More

by Julianne Escobedo Shepherd

It is June and so that means my summer is already ruined. June is the month when a new season of Love Island (U.K.) drops, and I commence devoting one hour of my day, for around 66 straight days, to the ins and outs of couplings and re-couplings and cheeky gals getting mugged off and Casa Amor and disgusting and potentially disease-vectoring games that involve spitting vodka drinks into another person’s mouth, and then another, and another, until the final contestant can spit whatever’s left into a beaker (the first team to fill the beaker wins). It’s like a communion chalice for the end of civilization.

The man I have lived with for 15 years questions me, summer after summer: Why do you like this show so much? I’m a smart woman in my 40s, I don’t have time for bullshit, I have never been so religious or obsessed with any other reality program other than the odd 90 Day Fiance or the Kardashians (or Married at First Sight or Love Is Blind or Back in the Groove) for masochistic sociological and/or anthropological purposes. I do not look down on reality shows, or people who watch them—clearly, I watch them a lot, and however I may try to intellectualize it, it always comes down to mindless passive pleasure. But none is as fascinating as Love Island, in which a revolving handful of sexy, bodaciously Restylaned singles from greater England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales meet up in a palatial villa in Mallorca for two months (if they’re lucky) in hopes of finding their one true love (or at least a person they can demonstratively and publicly ask to be their girlfriend before the end of the season).