What happened when a posh girl like me adopted the Love Island look: Sophia Money-Coutts says ‘men looked at me furtively, trying not to get caught. But women scowl and one blurts out “eurgh”’
- Sophia Money-Coutts, 38, swaps her pared down routine for a makeover that takes over two hours
- READ MORE: New Love Island lineup is full of lookalikes with similar stories
My skin is drowning in multiple shades of foundation, concealer, bronzer, blusher and highlighter.
Blinking feels like weight-lifting since I’m wearing a heavy strip of mascara-coated false eyelashes.
My mouth looks like Ronald McDonald’s: exaggerated with lip liner, then painted with ‘beige gold’ lipstick, before being topped up with a coat of gloss.
My short bob has been transformed into long, expertly curled locks that tumble over my shoulders, evoking the Van Dyck triptych of Charles I.
And don’t even get me started on my nails — long, sharp, absurd acrylic talons that make it impossible to type, pick up my coffee, or do anything, really.
Sophia Money-Coutts, 38, decided to swap her natural style and low maintenance make-up routine for a labour intensive Love Island look, taking two hours and twenty minutes to achieve
On top of this, every inch of me (and it’s pretty much all on show, thanks to the cut-away swimming costume I’m wearing) has been spray-tanned to a glowing shade of Fanta orange.
Why am I torturing myself thus, you ask? Have I joined the circus? Over-reached for a fancy dress party?
No, I’m trying to understand the appeal of the Love Island look, an over-the-top (and labour-intensive) aesthetic beloved by the contestants on the infamous reality TV show.
The first time I peer at my reflection, I can’t help bursting into laughter. I look ridiculous. Never in my life have I actually chosen to look like this.
Yet despite my initial alarm, I soon find myself swishing my hair like a My Little Pony. I flutter my eyelashes and am so delighted by my chiselled cheeks that I keep taking selfies and sending them to friends.
You need only to glance at the faces on social media, local High Streets, even at the school gates, to see that this Love Island look is increasingly the norm.
As someone who has always felt slightly ashamed about wearing make-up, it comes as a surprise that I’m now in that tribe, but part of me does feel stupendously glamorous.
My upper lip, I have occasionally worried, is too thin, and my hair too limp. And yet look at me now!
While posh girls, traditionally, are plain-faced with unpainted fingernails, Sophia embraced full-face contouring, nails over an inch long and a mass of clip-in hair pieces to achieve the glossy Love Island look
Love Island kicked off its tenth series earlier this month. As always, the lips are big, the cheeks suspiciously plump and the make-up is, well, eye-popping.
Or eye-popping to me at least, because I’ve long been a bit of a snob when it comes to piling on the slap.
Posh girls, traditionally, are plain-faced with unpainted fingernails and unbrushed hair. Their cheeks are flushed after a long day’s hunting, not because they’ve been rouged and bronzed.
Overly painted lips and eyelashes as big as butterfly wings? That (whisper it) is slightly common. The amount of make-up applied on Love Island would make a duchess call for her smelling salts.
As for putting on make-up in public — on the train, bus or even on television, like the contestants do every night? How frightfully vulgar.
There’s a certain irony in this attitude, given that make-up can be a great leveller, and can help some feel more confident.
But perhaps, just as those who attempt to better their status financially have long faced the snobbery of being labelled ‘new money’, broadcasting your efforts to transform yourself via the medium of foundation and fake lashes inspires scorn in certain circles.
If one must wear make-up, at least have the decency to do it quietly.
Sophia’s Love Island look caught the attention of men in West London but only the scowls of women
I park myself in the make-up artist’s chair to see whether trying the Love Island look for myself will alter — or merely cement — my existing prejudices.
Having watched various series of the show, I’ve often wondered why the female contestants would want to appear before millions of viewers with such obviously exaggerated features.
Don’t those who trowel on this much make-up feel a squirm of self-conscious embarrassment? That’s certainly how I feel during this process.
My conflicted feelings about make-up go way back. I was about ten when I found an old tube of my mother’s foundation abandoned under the bathroom sink and smoothed the cream over my face.
Even at that age, I was aware that it felt oddly illicit, like drinking or smoking.
‘What’s that on your face?’ Mum asked, when I appeared downstairs.
Taking a Kleenex, she wiped it across my cheek, and held up the evidence: a bright beige stain against the white tissue. ‘Go and wash it off,’ she instructed.
Clearly, make-up would have to wait. But as I hit my teens, I remember the thrilling sensation of buying my first tube of foundation, a gooey Benefit cream that I wore with thick kohl and gargantuan amounts of bronzer in the hope of channelling my inner Spice Girl.
Love Island contestants Olivia Attwood (Series 3) and Amy Hart (Series 5) would have their nails and hair extensions redone by beauticians every two weeks during the show
And then, almost as soon as I hit my 20s, I pared it back. Once I started working in an office and embarked on my first grown-up relationship, I worried that I wouldn’t be taken seriously if I plastered my cheeks like a Georgian harlot.
On a night out, I might dial up the eyeliner, but otherwise I followed a simple regime: dab of tinted moisturiser, one coat of mascara and powder to blot any shine.
Occasionally, as make-up trends changed and I watched the rise of the fake eyelash, the caterpillar eyebrow and the alarmingly plump lip, I’ve wondered whether I should make more of an effort, worrying my slapdash routine is old-fashioned.
I’ve visited multiple beauty counters, peering at the powders, pencils and pots and debating whether I should try them. But I’ve rarely bought anything because it all seems too much of a faff.
Now 38, I haven’t varied my morning ritual much in years. The tinted moisturiser has become thicker to give my skin a more youthful glow, and I deploy a more expensive Dior powder to take off the shine.
For nights out, I brush eyeshadow above and below my eyes (having learned that brown powder is softer and more flattering than Cleopatra kohl), but I don’t spend very long slapping any of this on. Twenty minutes, tops.
The same is largely true of my girlfriends. Some of us have started having Botox — a little smoothing out of foreheads and crow’s feet — but it’s supposed to look natural. Not overdone.
Yes, we may splurge on subtle lash extensions that only someone in the know would spot, but few would admit to having anything done (terribly common).
Lashings of make-up: Love Island’s Jess Harding pictured with fellow contestant George Fensom. Both Jess and George are taking part in the current series in Majorca
You’ll spot the telltale signs if you flick through the social pages of Tatler; the women in their 60s with no wrinkles, suspiciously shiny foreheads and the perfectly blonde hair of a Golden Retriever. But their make-up will, largely, look relatively unobtrusive.
By contrast, my Love Island makeover takes two hours and 20 minutes, and involves 29 different products, 26 clip-in hair pieces and so much hairspray I can actually taste it.
The contestants presumably have to be quite careful near the villa’s famous fire pit.
Amanda, the make-up artist, starts with my skin, using a primer to smooth out any uneven patches (and help cover up those pesky lines) before going in with a tinted moisturiser, then bronzing fluid and bronzing powder to start ‘contouring’ my face.
A technique brought to prominence by the Kardashians in recent years, it essentially means sculpting one’s face with highlighter and bronzer — enhancing the cheekbones, for example, and slimming the nose.
‘It’s basically old-school theatre make-up,’ explains Amanda. ‘Actors have been doing it for years.’
As women do today, in the Instagram era, because it’s how you appear through a camera lens that matters more than real life.
The process looks comical to begin with. Amanda draws thick brown stripes of the bronzing powder in a C-shape around the edge of my forehead and across my cheeks. Then she blends with a brush to create the illusion of angular cheekbones.
Sporting nail extensions and false eyelashes, Mary Bedford always looked glamourous in Series 7 of Love Island
Next, she darkens and fluffs my eyebrows, plasters my eyelids with smoky brown powder and glues on the fake eyelashes.
After that there’s thick kohl liner, and then a couple of coats of mascara.
So far, so expected. But there are surprises in store. Amanda powders parts of my face I’ve never worried about before, including my ears and under my chin ‘for definition’.
She then covers my lips with concealer to draw them back on bigger with lip liner. She sticks on the plastic nails — over an inch long — before my hair is back-combed, and 26 tumbling brown hair pieces are clipped in.
A contestant from the fifth series tells me that they took around the same time to get ready — two hours — every evening.
Though beauticians would be on hand every two weeks to redo hair extensions and nails, they were largely left to do their make-up themselves.
But that wasn’t a problem because most of them have been practising this dramatic look for years, if not decades.
In an interview last month, Victoria Beckham revealed her 11-year-old daughter, Harper, ‘has been able to do a full face and contour for quite some time’, in the proud way in which other parents might talk of their child passing Grade 8 violin.
Daughter of former footballer Michael Owen, Gemma Owen was one of the stars of last year’s series of Love Island. She stood out for favouring a more subtle look than some of the other contestants
At around the same age, I landed myself in trouble for daring to play with foundation, here’s a mother praising her daughter for knowing how to use a highlighter stick. Is this progress?
It’s notable that during last year’s series, comparisons were made between the more subtle look favoured by former footballer Michael Owen’s daughter, Gemma, and that of her less wealthy fellow contestants.
One commenter tweeted an image of her next to Luca Bish with the caption: ‘Harley Street teeth vs. Turkey teeth.’
For the uninitiated, ‘Turkey teeth’ refers to bright white veneers so named because young women — and men — are travelling abroad in droves to have them done at a fraction of the cost of similar treatments in the UK.
They’re obviously artificial and, in the first episode of this year’s series, blonde beautician Jess, 22, stated that her ideal man would have them. (I’m not convinced by this, but I’d possibly take them over the yellowing tombstones one occasionally spots in a posh man’s mouth, stained by red wine and smoking.)
So, what do the upper crust make of my dramatic transition?
As I walk around the streets of West London after the shoot, I discover something interesting. Men look at me, but they glance furtively, appraising me while trying not to get caught for it.
Women, on the other hand, look critically. Some frown as if they’ve just spotted something nasty on the pavement.
Maura Higgins was one of the Love Island lovelies from Series 5 which aired in May 2019 and ha since modelled for major fashion brands Boohoo and Anne Summers
Another, around my age, scowls and audibly mumbles ‘Eurrrrgh’ as she passes me.
Women, goes the adage, don’t dress for men; they dress for other women. How depressing that some would be openly hostile to another, simply because they don’t approve of her choice of cosmetics.
I wonder whether if they had seen the new ‘me’ in the form of the photographs on these pages, rather than in pan-sticked person, their reaction would have been the same. Is the reality TV look only so seemingly repugnant in reality?
‘You look amazing!’ is the general response from my friends over drinks that evening, although I suspect that’s because they know this look is temporary.
If I started going out like this permanently, I imagine they’d start to worry that I’d lost my marbles. Perhaps discuss an intervention.
Although I have to say, if I had the skill — not to mention the products and the time — to recreate this look at home, I’d be tempted to give it a go.
I’d possibly make the eyes and the lips less dramatic, but my perfectly sculpted cheekbones make my normal efforts feel dowdy by comparison.
And though some might disapprove, thankfully these days women have more freedom than ever before to do what they want with their bodies. Who cares if someone thinks they’re common?
I’m often struck by how emotionally articulate the women in the Love Island villa are, putting down the men when they deserve it in a way that even women my age might shy away from.
Judging them as bimbos simply because they’re wearing heavy make-up feels disgracefully old-fashioned.
When I get home, it takes half an hour to unclip the hair pieces, another 15 minutes to scrub the body paint away, unpeel the false eyelashes and wash my face.
The next morning, I walk into my bathroom and jump in fright at the sight of a large spider on the side of the bath, only to realise they’re the lashes. Happily, I lob them in the bin.
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