All those sweaty bodies in one long, windowless bedroom? No thank you.
If watching Love Island makes you feel like crap, you are not alone. Every season brings with it a new set of things to hate about yourself – you’ll never be as tanned, toned, thin, veneered, long-lashed, lush-haired and yet also hairless as any of these people. But there is one facet of life where we, the goblin audience of Love Island scoffing chips at home, definitively have the upper hand: there’s just no way we smell as bad as these contestants.
From the orphanage style bedroom with no windows or any visible ventilation, to the clammy looking shared shower room, to the outdoor bean bags soaked in crotch sweat, the Love Island villa surely must stink to the highest of Mallorcan heavens. But because Smell-O-Vision is yet to take off even after 60 years, all we can rely on is the internet to inform us just how badly it reeks. I committed over an hour to decoding the Love Island pong online, and here my key findings.
The Love Island villa smells like farts
And approximately 90% of them are thanks to Dami, who is already on the record with roughly one thousand epic tooters from the current season thus far. The man will truly fart anywhere from under the covers…
…to on top of the covers
To the breakfast bar:
To the couch:
To the romantic flower-lined walkway:
The villa had barely had a chance to recover from Jake the Ripper last season, not to mention jumping Jack, malodorous Molly-Mae, and crappy old Curtis. In the immortal words of Maura, “it smells like farts in here”. Never forget, never forgive.
The Love Island villa smells like body odour
Earlier this year, host Laura Whitmore revealed on a podcast that the “grim” villa “stinks” of body odour. “It smells so bad. If you think about it – that amount of people, about 40 or 50 Islanders go through it the whole summer,” she said. According to Google, the average temperature in Mallorca is 37 degrees throughout the day at the moment. When you combine that with the rigorous exercise routine of many of the Islanders, and the fact that I have never once seen anyone wipe down any gym equipment, I think it is safe to say that this is a putrid prison.
The Love Island villa smells like tonka beans
Given that the surface area of Davide’s chest is roughly 4000m2, I have to assume that the villa smells like whatever he sprays on his skin. According to Grazia, my go-to resource for all stench-based science, Davide’s scent of choice is Giorgio Armani’s Code, retailing at around $130 per vial from the Chemist Warehouse. It is a “fresh, citrus-laden perfume that’s warmed up with hints of bergamot, amber and tonka bean,” according to Grazia, to which I say: tonka bean? “A flat, wrinkled legume from South America with an outsize flavour that the federal government has declared illegal,” according to The Atlantic. And if you thought Jacques was toxic, eat 30 tonkas in a row and you’ll unfortunately end up dead.
The Love Island villa smells like fake tan
Although they have nothing to do but lounge around like lizards all day, those golden tans on Love Island are about as real as Danny’s hairline. In previous seasons host Laura Whitmore unearthed fake tan stains “everywhere” in the villa, the air of which my trusty Grazia refers to as “rich with fake tan and baby oil”. Although it was revealed that the show banned fake tan to protect the sheets, I still smell a rat. And when I say smell a rat, I mean see Paige’s tan lines.
The Love Island villa smells like the inside of a dishwasher
Why? I hear you ask. The Love Island villa smells like the inside of a dishwasher because of all the mugs, of course.
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