you're not a girl's girl
twitter can't help you now
Amid bright bikinis and even brighter neon signs, the hottest women you’ve ever seen are walking on eggshells around each other, terrified to be seen as anything other than best friends, sisters, anything to win the coveted position of girl’s girl. The villa is an isolated cage, an experiment designed to eliminate the routine, outside influence, and stigma of modern dating. Bugs under a microscope, prisoners in a fluorescent cage, every moment and angle captured by cameras. Nothing is secret—gossip behind someone’s back, and it will inevitably be revealed—reputations as “America’s Sweetheart” or the “big sister of the villa” or even “the People’s Princess” are shot in just a few words. Catty comments made in the heat of the moment, wiping away any chance at being the girl’s girl.
Reality TV is an industry almost entirely synonymous with pitting women against each other. Teresa Giudice flipped a table after Danielle Staub told her to “pay attention.” Lala Kent and Scheana Shay spent an entire season of Vanderpump Rules trying to paint their former bff Ariana Madix as a villain after she communicated that she wanted distance from Tom Sandoval, her ex-partner of 9 years, who publicly cheated on her with her best friend. Reality TV can’t exist, or at the very least, entertain, without conflict. Who wants to watch a dating show where everyone picks a person and they don’t encounter a single obstacle? We watch reality TV and competition dating shows for the heightened environment, the constant pressures the contestants face. Girlboss feminism has chewed us up and swallowed us whole. Women forming relationships and genuine sisterhood is a beautiful thing, but rarely is reality television the place to find the model example of women supporting other women.
In case you live under a rock, blissfully exist in a world without the internet, or have deemed yourself superior to good old-fashioned reality TV, I’m here to report that Love Island USA is back, and it’s a mess. With an influx of new viewers, an inevitability after the success of last season, it quickly became apparent that the new contestants, or at the very least, the producers, wanted to replicate some of the dynamics that made Love Island USA season 6 stand out. As a seasoned Love Island watcher, last season felt different; it had a je ne sais quoi that came purely from the cast of people—charismatic and beautiful women always ready to stand up for each other, men actually interested in fighting for the women they wanted, love stories, messy breakups, iconic quotes, Rob—but above all, it had PPG, the true love story of the season.
Serena Page, JaNa Craig, and Leah Kateb entered the villa on day one and formed an intense friendship that dominated the discourse surrounding the season. They supported each other’s ups and downs on the show, bickered, but ultimately always came together in support of one another. It was a rarity on a show that had women vying for the same men, the spark Love Island USA needed to spring to the mainstream. I’m not going to spend too long on the PPG conversation, but Aiyana Ishmael, associate editor of Teen Vogue, wrote an incredible piece directly discussing PPG and the concept of sisterhood during the early episodes of this season of LIUSA.
From the beginning of this season, the discourse between islanders and fans alike has centered around the term “girl’s girl.” Social media users will tell you that a girl’s girl isn’t “male-centered”; her actions prioritize the women around her instead of catering her image, actions, and words to benefit men or the ridiculous concept of the male gaze. It’s the girl who ever-so-kindly slides into your DMs to tell you that your boyfriend may be cheating on you, she’s the friend you make in a club bathroom, a breath of fresh air, she’s never seen women as competition, and never would act in a way that implies such. Women should want to be a girl’s girl, or so we’re told, it’s a sign among other women that we’re trustworthy, fun, someone easy to be friends with.
Sisterhood is nonexistent in this year’s villa. I’ve given it time to marinate, but after 26 episodes, it’s unrealistic to view most of the women as genuine friends, let alone “sisters.” The women claim to want it—they call each other sisters, talk about the lifelong bond they’re forming—but at the end of the day, they discuss that on camera because the narrative of being a girl’s girl benefits their brand.
Girl’s girl is nothing but a label created to slap on someone who fits a pre-determined mould for what womanhood, what sisterhood, looks like. Palatable and simple, behavior society has deemed acceptable, model even. It changes by the minute, one day you wake up a girl’s girl, but the next day someone makes a TikTok with an egregious statement like “Girls who drink pink lemonade are playing to the male gaze by drinking something so feminine and coquettish,” it gains traction, dominiates the discourse, inspires think piece after think piece and you ask yourself, is this really what the world has come to? Labels dominate the perception of others, especially women; she’s a pick-me girl, she’s catering to the male gaze, so and so is a cool girl—infinite ways to take traits and characteristics and minimize them into the smallest, most commercial form.
The idea of being a girl’s girl has been weaponized by the women on Love Island, carefully honed into their first line of defense when accusations of being fake or a call for them to take ownership of their behavior are tossed their way. Huda Mustafa, a current cast member, was one of the first to call herself a girl’s girl to the other women, yet for the first few weeks, she repetedly called new bombshells bitches for speaking to Jeremiah Brown, the man she was in a couple with. Cierra Ortega, Chelley Bissainthe, and Olandria Carthen spent weeks supporting Huda, comforting her during her many, MANY, breakdowns about Jeremiah, but came out blazing against her in one of the most recent episodes, first talking about her behind her back, refusing to have a conversation, and later fully fighting at the firepit after a villa game. Over and over, the women talk behind each other’s backs, gang up against whoever isn’t fitting in with their “sisterhood,” and demonstrate how friendship, the love that PPG showed each other, was the exception, not the rule.
A huge perk of Love Island is the almost immediate fame, money, and success each contestant walks out of the villa with. Maybe the women really do want a sisterhood, I’m sure some of them are decently friendly at this point, but it’s essential for their personal brands to be perceived as girls’ girls during their time in the villa. Finding love is merely a vehicle to jumpstart their careers as influencers, so they try to make us love them, see them as the girls we want to be friends with, would buy the products they recommend. Cameras in every corner of the villa, the islanders know before entering the villa that they’ll rarely have a moment of privacy, yes, they’re real people in an unscripted show, but of course they have an awareness of the cameras, a knowledge that their families, friends, future brand collaborators, and all of America can see them. They tolerate behavior from the other girls that almost certainly would have us blocking our friends’ numbers if they acted in such a manner in real life, but for the islanders, it’s a small sacrifice for a future of financial security, hundreds of thousands of followers waiting for them as soon as they leave the villa.
Fans go back and forth about the girls, judging who’s there for the “right reasons,” debating who amongst them is an actual girl’s girl. Ironically, as the fans watch Chelley and Huda verbally spar, they take to social media and levy insult after insult at the women in the villa. Regardless of their involvement in that week’s drama, no woman is safe from stray insults about their appearance, brutal slut shaming, even the occasional death threat. Ironically, Love Island fans, primarily women, watch the show and take issue with the islanders self-describing as girls’ girls, and then themselves behave in a way that is far from their repeatedly preached definition of a girl’s girl.
Women are not docile beings who nod and turn a cheek whenever wronged. We’re reactive, deeply feeling, and that looks infinitely different for each person and situation. Interpreting women arguing among themselves or turning on each other during disagreements as “male-centered” is laughably ridiculous. Of course, we should try to support one another, be that support system, but it’s unrealistic to expect blind loyalty all the time, let alone in a tiny villa with 7 other women all trying to date the same men. Reality is far different from the Love Island villa, it’s messier. Friendship breakups happen every day, men come between friends, someone intentionally steals a friend’s shirt, we’re never realistically going to fit this lucrative definition of what a woman supporting other women should look like.
Life imitates art, or whatever the Love Island equivalent is. This season is a dumpster fire, a bomb ready to blow, in and out of the villa, and I want to be as far away as possible when that happens.
thank you for reading people’s princess! i took a little break from posting my writing on here after feeling pretty intense impostor syndrome and just general bad vibes, but i’m glad to be back in this space that i truly love. thank you for sticking with me and supporting this publication.
you can find me on instagram @sarahcucchiara and @peoples.princess.
with love,
sarah 🍧🌸
I feel like this season’s a good representation of gen z dating scene too, men who won’t ever commit bc they’re waiting for the next best thing and the position they put women in (competitive, disingenuous, petty) not feeling very articulate rn but definitely feeling this
I completely agree on your take on the girls girl!! I feel like when you say or do something for yourself you’re labeled as a not a girls girl but what does that even mean?? Love Island (which i hate this season) is to explore romantic interests, none of these people know each other nor do they owe each other shit because theyre women. Im just so tired of it!!