Entertainment
Love Island’s first deaf contestant Tasha opens up on ‘superpower’-Meghna Amin-Entertainment – Metro
We can’t wait to see her in the villa!
Tasha Ghouri is Love Island’s first deaf contestant (Picture: ITV/Instagram)
Love Island contestant Tasha Ghouri has revealed her ‘superpower’, ahead of appearing on the dating reality show next week.
The ITV programme is making history this year with Tasha becoming the show’s first-ever deaf contestant.
The 23-year-old model and dancer, who wears a cochlear implant, opened up about her ‘superpower’ in an Instagram post, shared by someone stepping in to run Tasha’s social media accounts as she prepares to enter the villa.
The post was captioned: ‘Her superpower – Tasha wanted to give you all a secret snipper of her superpower and her story.
‘Visibility has always been her driving force.’
Sharing a picture of Tasha with her cochlear implant on, the post goes on to explain that she has ‘a sensory loss which means the small hairs in the cochlear were missing and damaged when [she] was born,’ adding that Tasha and her family ‘still don’t know why.’
Answering in Q&A format, another question read: ‘Did I learn sign language/BSL,’ with the response: ‘Yes I did, in fact the whole family did when I was young. As I got older I became less reliant on it because of the cochlear implant and learning to lip read.’
In another slide, Tasha explained the difference between a hearing aid and a cochlear implant, saying: ‘Hearing aids simply amplify sound, but if the brain can’t understand the noise it’s just noise. The implant has small fibre optics pushed in to the cochlear to replace the missing hairs that stimulate the fluid and send intelligent messages to my brain. The outer part is a computer that is programmed for the frequency of my loss.’
Viewers flooded to the comments to praise Tasha (Picture: Instagram/ tashaghouri)
A final question asked: ‘Can I hear anything and what do people sound like,’ to which the reply was: ‘When the outer piece of my device is taken off I cannot hear anything. I feel beats and vibrations. People sound a little robotic but my brain has adapted to it and I also rely on lip reading and body language.’
Tasha’s post was flooded with support from viewers and fans, including one who wrote: ‘As a deaf person, I am SO excited for the representation this season.’
Love Island has been praised for featuring deaf singleton Tasha (Picture: Instagram @tashaghouri)
Another penned: ‘Absolutely amazing! I’m hard of hearing just like you and this is perfect. Rooting for you on Love Island,’ while former Love Islander Hugo Hammond shared: ‘Absolutely love this – what a fantastic idea #TeamTasha.’
Metro.co.uk understands that Tasha won’t require additional support on the show in terms of her hearing difficulties.
Before signing up for Love Island, Tasha featured in a viral Asos campaign last year that saw her showing her medical device in an earring advert.
At the time, she wrote: ‘MY HEART IS FULL RIGHT NOW! Thanks so much for all of your kind messages WOW. It may just be an ear but it means so much more – like what @rnid_uk said representation matters, and I’m bloody proud to represent my community.
‘Biggest love to @asos for welcoming me in and breaking boundaries as this will really help and inspire people out there.’
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Tasha will be joining a bumper line-up of sexy singletons, which also includes footballer Michael Owen’s eldest daughter Gemma Owen.
Love Island returns on Monday, June 6 at 9pm on ITV.
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