Is she a 'girl's girl' — or just playing one on TV? The great 'Love Island' debate.
'Two huge things I'm over: the forced sisterhood and the overuse of therapy terms,' one viewer complained on Reddit last week. Another took to X: 'If l hear one more person on Love Island say 'girl's girl'…"
The idea of what sisterhood should look like among women has been prevalent as soon as this crop of hot singles touched down in the Fiji villa. Barely into episode 2, Huda Mustafa refers to fellow cast members Olandria Carthen and Chelley Bissainthe as her 'sisters,' saying that she is excited for their 'sisterhood' to grow during the show.
But this automatic kinship is soon tested when 'bombshells' — contestants who unexpectedly join the show to and put existing relationships to the test — enter the villa, and the fissures begin to show: Mustafa calls bombshell Amaya Espinal a 'bitch' moments after meeting her and later says that bombshell Iris Kendall is 'shady' and 'not a girl's girl' after she kisses Mustafa's partner, Jeremiah Brown, during one of the villa-wide games.
As the web of drama and love triangles continued to unfold, the bonds of this compulsive sisterhood hit a boiling point when contestants wrote both signed and anonymous notes to one another in the challenge 'Stand on Business.' Mustafa, now partnered up with Chris Seeley (who had previously expressed interest in Bissainthe), was suddenly in the firing line. She received two scathing notes, one of which read: "Do you think you've been following girl code when it comes to Chris and Chelley's relationship? Are you a girl's girl?' Bissainthe also called Mustafa out in her signed note: 'If you're going to preach about being a girl's girl, you should practice what you preach.'
So what is a girl's girl? While the "mean girl" — depicted in pop culture through characters like Regina George in Mean Girls or Grease's Rizzo — is someone who's quick to put down other women, a 'girl's girl' is the opposite. She sticks by her girls no matter what. A girl's girl unfailingly abides by the unspoken rules of 'girl code,' like not dating your friends' exes or gatekeeping where your outfit is from. She doesn't act like she's cooler than thou, and she certainly doesn't live for the approval of men (aka the much-mocked "pick-me girl"). In the process, the 'girl's girl' has become the gold standard of a feminist, sisterly woman — someone who's not just a good friend but also can claim the moral high ground.
Haley Metzger is a longtime fan of the Love Island franchise and has watched the "girl's girl" dynamic unfold on the show over time. 'Some girls would come in and be aggressive and pursue boys who were coupled up, and other girls were more conscious and would always ask the girls' permission to pull someone for a chat,' she tells Yahoo. 'The contestants who were labeled 'girl's girls' aligned with viewers' overall opinion of how women should treat each other, and so the Love Island 'girl's girl' became the standard.'
It makes sense why this archetype has become so celebrated onscreen and off-. Many women have stories of dealing with mean girls and the like or felt the sting of playing second fiddle to men. But it has also given way to vague definitions: A 'girl's girl' could be a woman who likes fruity drinks, a woman who texts her friends before her boyfriend or someone who doesn't call out other women when they make mistakes or are in the wrong. Similarly, a random assortment of infractions — from dating someone else's crush to looking at another woman in a weird way — can result in an accusation of not being a girl's girl. And to not be a girl's girl? Your moral compass must be way off.
Metzger says she's noticed a shift in the way women interact with one another as contestants on dating shows like Love Island. And like other young women who spoke to Yahoo, she's not buying into it.
'I am finding that in the recent seasons of Love Island, the girls are tending to prioritize their relationships with each other rather than trying to find love — which I believe is good policy in the real world, but isn't super compatible with a show like Love Island,' she says. 'We used to have contestants who would explicitly say that they were not 'afraid to step on anyone's toes' to find love in the villa, and that just isn't the dynamic anymore.'
Jasmine Anomnachi considers the rush to be branded as a 'girl's girl' on Love Island USA insincere. She sees it as women contestants jockeying to be regarded as some paragon of feminist morality instead of actually taking the time to build genuine relationships.
'Friendships can only work when [they are] built on 100% trust and actually being open and vulnerable to the person that you're trying to build a friendship with,' she tells Yahoo. 'Sometimes people view friendships as this robotic thing, where it's 'hey, let's be friends.'" Real bonds are quite so "easy" to form, she says. "It takes time, it takes energy, and it takes effort, and none of that was put into this group of women.'
Laurie, who asked not to share her last name, has felt a sense of déjà vu watching the "girl's girl" drama unfold onscreen. 'So many of us have been that loyal, ride-or-die friend to someone who ended up betraying us, all while [they were] preaching about 'sisterhood' on social media,' she says. 'It's wild how relatable that betrayal is, and I think it's triggering a global eye-roll from women everywhere.'
She also empathizes with Mustafa, who was called out for not following "girl code" when she connected with a man her friend had her eye on. 'I had a friend who introduced me to a guy and later told our entire friend group that I stole him from her,' Laurie says. 'She literally flipped the narrative to make herself the victim and me the villain — and somehow convinced people! It was like gaslighting with a PR campaign. Wild times.'
Metzger, who is 30, says the discourse reminds her of experiences she had in her 20s with other women. She has another bone to pick: When contestants are hyper-fixated on proving their morality, it makes for poor reality entertainment. 'As a reality TV lover, I keep thinking, This isn't the real world, this is Love Island, and it's supposed to be a competition,' Metzger says. 'The expectation that everyone acts like a 'girl's girl' and never steps on a woman's toes is doing a disservice to the show.'
The term "girl's girl" has lost all nuance because it's being used as a branding iron rather than a space to think about how people treat their interpersonal relationships, Laurie adds. 'Real friends don't need to constantly say 'girl code' — they live it,' she points out. 'But what we've seen is people kissing each other's love interests, spilling secrets and moving with a level of disloyalty that screams performative friendship. Nothing about this season feels like sisterhood.'
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