When Love Island returned to screens for its 13th series this month, it was met with just 600,000 viewers: the lowest number of eyeballs on the bikini-clad reality dating show since the series began a decade ago, and lower than any launch of Big Brother on ITV2 ever.
It seemed safe to say that the nation had fallen out of love with watching carbon copy heterosexual hot people pulling each other for a chat. The format was tired and the “my type on paper” one-liners had grown predictable. For a “reality” series, the vapid exchanges didn’t reflect real-world dating discussions around background, worldview, or gender politics.
Enter: Jasmine Gaziza Müller, a 27-year-old fashion business owner from London with Iranian, Indian, and Danish heritage who, alongside running her brand, Mahila Intimates, hosts an anti-brainrotting social media series called “Smart Girl Scroll” in which she recommends everything from essays on the rise of anti-intellectualism to Payal Kapadia’s Palme d'Or-nominated Mumbai-set drama All We Imagine as Light.
Müller, to be concise, is smart, articulate – and hasn’t been afraid to show it. While in the 2018 season four contestant Hayley Hughes went viral for asking whether Liverpool (where she lived) was a country or a county, Müller has conversely given Love Island’s latest season a second lease of life online by pointing out and dismantling patriarchy in the villa.
When Müller criticised male contestants for saying women who love attention are red flags (“I think that shows insecurity”), she was dubbed “off-putting” by the brother of the man she’s dating. The group of boys then later whined about the unfairness of women being able to speak frankly about their behaviour, while they’d be lambasted if roles were reversed. This so-called “hypocrisy” is the manosphere’s favourite qualm.
“You guys are moping around like children,” Müller told them. “We have been disrespected in a line, all of us,” she added in a later discussion. “And you guys want to talk about double standards. Do you know the lives that women live; the double standards that we live every day? If for one second we want to have the upper leg, I think you can give us that.”
In another chat with her partner’s brother, she hammered home: “A lot of you in here are not used to women having really strong opinions and it’s showing.” Her victim, Aidan, then retorted: “I feel like that’s the same maybe on your behalf as well,” before Müller, with lethal precision, countered: “What? Men with strong opinions? That’s my everyday life.”
Not since season three, when Camilla Thurlow asked Jonny Mitchell whether he was a feminist (“I feel like feminism believes in inequality,” he replied), has Love Island so clearly demonstrated the ideological divide present in modern dating. An analysis of survey data found in 2024 that young women have rapidly become more liberal, while young men have become more conservative, or taken longer to become progressive – and now we’re finally seeing it play out on our screens.
Lately, life in the Love Island villa has finally become – much like in many instances in the outside world – less about women acting a certain way to make men like them, and more about women scoping out whether men like them for who they actually are: real people, with real opinions.
“You’re projecting onto me a version of me that you want,” Müller told her current partner, Kavan, when he questioned her behaviour. “This is who I am. I am opinionated. I will ride with my girls till the end and I want my man to ride with me to the end.” Was it Shakespeare? Certainly not. But it was a refreshingly astute reaction that many viewers have related to.
“They need to release a second hour of just what Jasmine did that day, please,” one person begged the show’s producers on TikTok. “Wait, is Love Island watchable again?!” another asked, astonished. “Yeah. It's not the same boring conversations that we've had for the last few seasons,” a third person replied, alongside calls to give Müller her own show.
Müller is inarguably beautiful – but she has shown, swiftly and assertively, that this is the least interesting thing about her. At a time when filler is flogged at bargain basement prices and the “perfect body” is just a weekly jab away, anyone with a bit of money can adhere to Love Island’s beauty standards; Not everyone can have an overt interest in the world or a dedication to being well-read. In 2026, to viewers and beyond, that’s hot.
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