Women should be allowed to be angry both on and off-camera, says Elise Ando

Elise Ando

With the return of Belle Hassan on this year’s edition of Celebrity Love Island, I was reminded of the spectacular series she came from in 2019. It gave us the likes of Molly-Mae Hague, Maura Higgins, Amber Gill and Amy Hart and partly owes its popular viewership to these charismatic and angry women.

Hassan is most remembered for powerfully standing her ground when she found out that her then partner, Anton Danyluk, who spoke at the Cambridge Union last year in the Lent comedy debate, had asked another woman for her number. Recently, she has risen to fame again for setting boundaries when her partner, Sean Stone, cheated on her with another contestant. Stone’s response to Hassan’s confrontation was striking: “I don’t know why you’re shouting,” and her response was the obvious explanation – “because I’m fuming”. Women are attacked for their emotional delivery, not the substance of it.

For example, when Anna yelled at her boyfriend for flirting with another woman, she was labelled ‘Storm Anna’[1]. The titles of other YouTube videos put out by ITV from the same series read ‘Anna blows up at Michael for betraying Amber’[2], ‘Belle slams Anton during epic fight’[3] and ‘Maura is Livid with Tom’[4]. All situate women in the active, where their anger is the focus, taking the accountability away from men engaging in blatant sexism or cheating. Furthermore, the vocabulary used is explosive, portraying women as hysterical, out of control and therefore trivialising their pain. The effect of this language is significant, for example, my male friends all felt her anger was unjustified, many labelling her as crazy.

Simone De Beauvoir observed that ‘one is not born a woman, but, rather becomes one’[6]. Girls will grow up, like I did, watching Love Island, observing the backlash to women’s rage and learn to be more docile as protection against a similar response. De Beauvoir argues that the masculine gender and the universal person are conflated so that only the female gender is marked[5]. Women are marked for their participation with traits that are seen as inherently masculine, bound by political and cultural ropes that rein in every attempt at a genderless choice of action. Monique Wittig further argues the category of woman is often reduced to a sexual one with the sole purpose of male pleasure. An angry woman resists being sexualised and does not align with the assigned nature of the female category; therefore, society creates a reason to punish her.

And punished they are. A number of series have been flagged by Women’s Aid as broadcasting and glorifying forms of coercive control, a legally recognised component of domestic abuse, such as gaslighting, possessiveness and manipulation[7]. Deflecting personal blame by criticising a partner for being assertive or indignant is certainly a form of coercive control. The track record is clearly not immaculate, but the outlook is also not completely negative. There are many instances of women standing up for themselves on the show and being celebrated for it. Belle reclaims her stormy label where she speaks of ‘Hurricane Belle’ in this series as being a powerful personal attribute when used in the right moments. I really hope to see women on Love Island embracing the markedness of their gender more, breaking free of the culturally and politically weaved ropes holding them back from empowerment, not being afraid to defy the narrow confines of prescribed behaviour that could make them attractive to a man that might subject them to forms of coercive control.

In a country where one in eight women experienced domestic abuse[8], we need to start allowing women to be angry when they’re hurt in relationships without judgement and place the focus back on the men who made them feel that way in the first place. Let women be angry on Love Island, so that women can be angry everywhere.

[1] Storm Anna Arrives as Jordan Grafts India | Love Island 2019

[2] (43) Anna blows up at Michael for betraying Amber | Love Island UK 2019 – YouTube

[3] Belle slams Anton during epic fight | Love Island UK 2019

[4] Maura Is Livid With Tom | Love Island 2019

[5] Butler, J. (1999) Gender Trouble : Tenth Anniversary Edition. New York: Routledge. Available at: https://research-ebsco-com.ezp.lib.cam.ac.uk/linkprocessor/plink?id=af0d7b1f-31b7-3bcf-8564-3ee9656834e5 (Accessed: 11 February 2026).

[6] Beauvoir, S. de & Parshley, H. M. (1997) The second sex / Simone de Beauvoir ; translated and edited by H.M. Parshley. London: Vintage.

[7] Women’s Aid responds to behaviour on Love Island

[8] Crime in England and Wales – Office for National Statistics