‘It’s fuelled my fire’: Love Island’s Tasha Ghouri opens up on vile abuse as she ’embraces deaf accent’
Love Island star Tasha Ghouri has opened up on facing ableism on social media during a candid chat on GB News.
Ghouri joined Peter Andre and Ellie Costello to discuss her activism on the matter and how online abuse “fuelled her fire”.
The 25-year-old now wants to normalise deaf accents and raise awareness about cochlear implants – a small electronic device that helps her to hear.
“Whilst I was on the show [Love Island], I had a lot of ableism”, she said.
“I had comments like ‘I want to rip out your cochlear implant and throw it in the pool’, very brutal things like that.
“Coming out of the show, I turned it into a positive. I don’t like negativity. I wanted to use my platform to educate.
“The amount of people that changed their opinion and said ‘I didn’t know that’ goes to show the lack of awareness and education about cochlear implants or the deaf community.
“I used to to fuel my fire to do better and motivation to do better in this world.”
Commenting on Ghouri’s “amazing” attitude, Peter Andre told the Love Island star she has the ability and facilities available to achieve something special.
“If you just keep going, there is no doubt in my mind that you will make such a huge impact”, he said.
“I love that you take that negativity and throw it away. It’s hard to do that.
“If you can master that now, your future is awesome.”
Ghouri was the ITV2 show’s first deaf contestant and has spoken openly about using a cochlear implant since leaving the island.
In a video posted to TikTok, she “embraced” her “deaf accent” by posting a TikTok without her implant.
She told fans: “I don’t know how loud I’m speaking, or how clear I’m speaking.”
Speaking on GB News, she spoke about how using social media as a positive has helped others.
“I get messages nowadays saying ‘I feel confident to wear my hair up because of you’,” she said.
“If I can help one person or make one person happy, that has made my day.
“That’s all I want to do, I want people to find their inner confidence and embrace their disability.”