Temptation Island is just as we remembered it: with the boyfriends acting tough for the cameras and the girlfriends ready to scold them as soon as the single girls in hoods walk along the shore. Setting aside the fact that the heights reached in the summer edition will probably not return anytime soon – the idea of bringing Tony back as the Pygmalion of the male village is confirmation of that – we must say that the first episode of the winter version has nonetheless succeeded in getting people talking, although not for very noble reasons. Beyond the wet t-shirt contest among the contestants – the creators of Temptation Island thought it was a good idea to pour buckets of water on the girls to elect the most sensual among them by the boyfriends, taking feminist battles back fifty years – one of the lowest points was reached by Antonio, who, in a moment of camaraderie with the other guys, said he asked his girlfriend Titty to marry him in Paris only because she was pressuring him. Following his story, the couple found themselves in the shade of the Eiffel Tower surrounded by various lovers on their knees ready to propose to their partners, which prompted Antonio to retrieve a luck ring from a stall and do the same.
Titty and Antonio
“There was nothing planned and today I regret it,” the (very serious) words of Antonio, who decided to speak out about such a delicate issue not privately as one might have expected, but in front of half of Italy, at a considerable distance from the fiancée. “For me, she is zero; I want to leave her but I can’t. And I can’t because, as soon as I try to dump her, instead of crying and leaving while respecting me, she clings even more,” Antonio’s thoughts, expressed in front of a particularly stunned Temptation Island audience because such an outburst, more than from a bonfire of immediate confrontation, deserves a report, but anyway. And to think that poor Titty, on the other side of the Pinnettu, despairs for a man who, for a certain period, was often seen around with another girl whom he passed off as his wife – a circumstance that led Antonio to tattoo Titty’s face on his calf, but let’s move on -. “I disgust myself because I forgave him for cheating,” exclaims Titty, seeing her counterpart throw himself into the arms of single girl Saretta. It goes without saying that by the end of the episode, the girl calls Filippo Bisciglia and asks him to notify Antonio of her intention for a bonfire, although we will only know if he accepts the invitation in the next episode.
Alfonso and Federica
Meanwhile, it is clear that this season of Temptation Island is committed to showing the worst of certain attitudes – especially male ones – that are much more common than we want to admit. Take, for example, Alfred, who didn’t take long to forget his Anna by diving headfirst into courting single Sofia – “Once you go black, you never come back” he tells her at one point – but also Alfonso, who for eight years essentially prevented his girlfriend Federica from having a life of her own – she was only allowed to leave the house with her mother but also had to wear a one-piece swimsuit at the beach to discourage unwanted male gazes (“I do it because otherwise, they look at her and I don’t want to get into arguments with other men”). We know, unfortunately, that some of the nonsense we see on Temptation Island are still present in our society, and that’s why we hope that the girls watching the show realize that certain toxicities are not normal and must be addressed before it’s too late.