Love Island’s Cara De La Hoyde claims she’s not ‘pretty’ enough to appear on the show now

Cara De La Hoyde claims she’s not ‘pretty’ enough to appear on Love Island now and warns future stars to expect more trolling than her generation.

The former Islander, 30, has given up watching the show after being made to feel inadequate by the stars of more recent series.

In an exclusive interview, Cara, who won the competition in 2016 with husband Nathan Massey, 28, admitted she only went in the TV villa to avoid paying rent for six weeks, while contestants today have preconceived ideas and face ‘horrible trolling.’

Cara told MailOnline: ‘I’ll be honest I don’t really watch Love Island anymore because the people on there, they’re just so pretty and everything and it just stresses me out watching these girls walk around and I think “I don’t look like that anymore.”

‘I think it’s a really difficult thing to go into now and I’ll be honest I don’t think I would want to go into Love Island now. It’s too big of an industry now for me. It would stress me out too much. 

‘With Nathan and I and the earlier series it was all about love – we had no expectations of what Love Island was.

‘I went in there because I didn’t want to pay rent for six weeks! I thought I’ll go in there, I’m a little bit of a weirdo and nobody is going to fancy me and I fell in love and met my husband!

‘Nathan and I are really lucky, we have never really been trolled or had any horrible people comment stuff but the amount of stress these lot get now, it’s crazy.

‘I’m not saying some of them don’t bring it on themselves because I reckon some of them do but the pressure now is crazy, especially for couples to stay together after the show.

‘Camilla and Jamie, Jess and Dom, those early series, there was a lot less pressure on people to stay together so relationships were more nature. 

‘I really don’t envy them. Back then it was all about love and now it’s a bit more of a holiday…’

Cara, who’s a mum to Fred, three, and seven-month-old Delilah, admits she can often doubt herself as a mum and while Nathan is keen to have more children, she’s happy to devote a bit more time to boosting her body confidence.   

She said: ‘Nathan always says, “I think we should have another baby” and I’m like, I think we should wait, I want my body to get back to how it was.

‘I have just got myself one of those Ecoline bikes – we’re all going to be out in the summer so I’ve got to something!

‘I go on Instagram and everybody’s doing these TikToks and reels of their hair and makeup and I think “it must be nice to be able to sit there and I do that.”

‘I just think it’s mums, we’re so up and down and sometimes you think “I’ve got this” and “I’m amazing” and some days you look at yourself and think “I’m a sack of potatoes.” It’s all women; we’re all so hard on ourselves.

‘The kids think I’m all right and my husband still fancies me so I’m doing something right!’

Cara and Nathan, who married in 2019, and are preparing to move into a new house together later this year, can’t believe they met on a ITV2 dating show and say their lives have been a whirlwind since scooping the £50,000 prize.

‘It feels like a dream that happened a long time ago, when the new series airs this summer we will have been together five years,’ Cara said.

‘I say to him “Nath, in five years, we went on a TV show, won a TV show, got a flat together, got pregnant, then briefly split up, then got back together, then had a baby, then bought a house, then got married, then had another baby” and we’re actually moving into another house now.

‘We’ve done what people do in a 10-year period in half the time.’

While the young couple has faced the challenges of lockdown together and welcomed daughter Delilah in the middle of a pandemic, Cara credits husband Nathan’s support for her ability to stay strong.

She said: ‘It’s very overwhelming sometimes being a mum. I am really, really lucky because Nathan has been a stay at home dad and he’s really stepped up.

‘I am really fortunate I’ve had him to depend on. I’d be lost without him, without Nathan I don’t know what would have happened. He’s seen how tired I look and I think he feels a bit sorry for me!

‘He was mental on Love Island, he was an absolute Essex lad but as soon as Fred came along and then when Delilah came along oh my gosh… he is obsessed with her.

‘Obviously he loves the kids the same but with a girl he feels so protective. He’s a Disney dad and I got my dream.’

Cara has teamed up with baby brand Owlet, who makes smart monitors – and said she owes their latest product, the Smart Sock 3, for easing her anxieties around Delilah’s bedtime.

The new Smart Sock 3 tracks the baby’s heart rate and oxygen levels and chimes with a nursery rhyme to alert the parent of anything they need to know. 

The device works alongside an app on your phone and has a ‘history feature’ to see how long and how well your baby has slept. 

Cara said: ‘Recently we have started sleep training Delilah because she wasn’t sleeping and I was breastfeeding so literally every hour I was being woken up. Nathan was sleeping in another bed and it was just mental. 

‘We got a sleep therapist in and this is when the Owlet really came into its own, so you have the camera and the Smart Sock as well.

‘The Smart Sock has a sensor in it and monitors if she’s asleep, awake – babies have light and deep sleep – it monitors her oxygen, heart rate.

‘With the Smart Sock as well you have a monitor sensor you have next to your bed, which is what you use to charge it, and if anything changes that you should be alerted about, it actually plays you a nursery rhyme.

‘At first I was like “do you really need all this stuff?” but one of the most stressful things about having a baby is when they first go and sleep in their own room.

‘The Owlet is all on your phone, it’s an app, you can see the camera on your phone and all of the baby’s statistics and you get notifications through. I can’t sing its praises enough; it really is a good piece of kit especially for first time parents. This literally takes all the worry away.’