New way Love Island contestants can relay consent in shared dorms
Love Island Australia has introduced a new way for contestants to relay their consent to whatever is going on between the sheets.
Fiona Byrne
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Just when you thought reality TV had done it all, a “sex button” is now part of one of Australia’s biggest shows to alert producers when contestants are going from friendly to frisky under the sheets.
The “button of love” or ‘horny heart’ has emerged on Love Island Australia to enable islanders to inform the control room that they are consenting to whatever is going on under the doona in the villa’s shared dorm.
Previously the contestants had to spring up from their intimate activities and yell out “I consent” to the camera in the room so there was proof that both parties were willingly involved in a romantic entanglement.
“Once they go under the covers they are out of our view,” Love Island Australia’s executive producer Alex Mavroidakis said.
“We have (in previous seasons) had producers creeping into the bedroom at night time tapping them (islanders) on the shoulder and saying ‘you have to say I consent’, which is incredibly embarrassing for the producer and certainly for the islander.
“To alleviate that we designed the consent button or the horny heart. We don’t film sex, as soon as they (islanders) are doing something we leave them to it, but we need to know they are both mutually consenting.”
Viewers are not made aware if the “sex button” has been pushed, but it is fair to assume it would be getting a bit of a workout on a show designed around hook-ups and breakups.
“We don’t pretend that Love Island is the mother of all social experiments,” Mavroidakis said.
“It is a fun show with incredibly good-looking people.
“We want people to laugh and enjoy the romance and look at lots of hot people — that is Love Island.”
Love Island Australia has been an online sensation thanks to its unfiltered cast which includes Married At First Sight star Al Perkins, former Ballarat fashion student Phoebe Spilller who says she is addicted to dating footballers and UK expat turned Brisbane pool boy Callum Hole who hails from Wales and describes himself as a “WILF: a Welshman I’d like to …”. You get the idea.
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