Abbie Chatfield Is Calling Out The Men’s Behaviour On ‘FBoy Island’
The first two eps of FBoy Island dropped Monday night, and it’s everything we wanted in a reality show.
Not only is our fave Abbie Chatfield hosting, but the house where the FBoys live is shaped like a dick, as well as being covered in dicks (and I guess, filled with dicks too). Genius!
If you missed it, here’s the premise of the show: Three leading ladies are sent to an island with 24 men to find love, but there’s a catch. Half of the men are self-proclaimed FBoys, while the others claim to be Nice Guys. Each week, one contestant is eliminated, and their FBoy or Nice Guy status is revealed. If the ladies make it to the end with a Nice Guy, the couple will pocket a cool $50,000.
Of course, what’s a reality show without a little bit of drama? After one of the three women, Molly O’Halloran, told the group about her ex-fiancé’s cheating ways, some gronk named Caleb couldn’t help but make a sexist comment to the other boys. Instead of keeping his mouth shut, he heaped blame on Molly for her broken engagement, because she likely “ain’t got no good pussy”. Yes, I’m serious. And yes, he’s definitely an FBoy.
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The scene attracted some outrage from fans, with people asking Abbie why she’d stand behind a show portraying that kind of behaviour. In an extremely loooong series of Instagram Stories, the former Bachelor contestant defended the choice to air the cringe-worthy scene.
I’ve summarised her thoughts below, but honestly, everything she said was on point.
It’s time to call out sexist behaviour
Abbie started off by saying that comments like Caleb’s often aren’t shown on reality TV, despite being considered “normal language” to some men. “These things are said by men all the fucking time in the real world,” she said.
“Because while to you and I that is clearly poor behaviour, obviously to a lot of men, that is normal language. So seeing this on a reality show and seeing this reaction will teach people who don’t know any better [that] this is fucking gross.”
While it’s tough to see that behaviour onscreen, it has started an important conversation. “All the discourse around why it isn’t okay and how fucked it is, is happening because of the show,” she added.
“Clean” shows like The Bachelor are just not realistic
Abbie went on to make another important point about other dating shows, with Abbie comparing Fboy island to The Bachelor where the contestants often come off as “clean”.
“This isn’t The Bachelor where the Bachelor is held to the highest regard. These are FBoys… they’re getting called out and being exposed for who they really are,” she explained.
“So you know, having these completely clean and pristine shows where nothing bad is ever said about people or to people, just doesn’t make for any kind of social progress. You can say that if we made this show completely clean and got rid of that scene, and got rid of anything that was insulting towards women, that would be a progressive show. But it actually would just be completely hiding and masking anything that actually happens in the real world.” Boom. Mic drop.
The FBoy scene creates ‘teachable moments’
Send your mind back to 2022, when we were in the thick of the Olivia Frazer and Domenica Calarco drama on Married at First Sight. Olivia obtained a nude photo of Domenica, which was originally from OnlyFans, and shared it with other cast members. Abbie points out that by airing confronting scenes like this, reality TV can do so much more than entertain.
“Would you have said we shouldn’t have aired what Olivia did to Domenica on MAFS?” she asked. “Or was that a huge teachable moment for people who are anti-sex workers, and that creates so many conversations? The point of reality shows is to entertain but also…create conversations around where we sit on a moral spectrum and what we can accept as decent behaviour.”
What’s the point if nobody watches?
And finally, we’re all talking about the show because of this very scene. If it didn’t make the cut, would anybody even tune into the next episode?
“If this show had no drama or no one to say how awful [they are], you wouldn’t want to watch it, it would be fucking boring,” Abbie said.
“So if we edited that out, and edited out everything that was bad that was said about anyone or any kind of toxic behaviour that was shown, you wouldn’t watch it.”
Personally, I love reality TV for the messy moments, and I don’t think I’m alone. After the first two eps, there are now more FBoys left on the island than Nice Guys. Let’s hope that the three women get better at eliminating the FBoys…
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You can watch FBoy Island now on BINGE.
Image credits: FBoy Island, BINGE.