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In the villa, the “girl’s girl” label is easy to claim, until jealousy, bombshells, and multimillion-dollar grand prize put that loyalty to the test.
The new seasons of Love Island UK and Love Island USA kicked off on 1 June and 2 June, respectively. Two villas, two time zones, and one question that keeps coming up in every group chat: who’s actually a girl’s girl, and who’s just using the phrase to get ahead of the grand prize?
Almost every season, someone leads with that label in their self-description. And almost every season, the rest of the villa — plus a few million viewers — ends up testing whether she meant it. Here’s where things stand right now, plus a look back at last summer’s biggest example of that label going badly wrong.
Love Island USA season 8 cast via @loveislandusa on X Is calling another woman out “keeping it real,” or mean-girl behaviour dressed up as honesty?
This season’s clearest test case is the Priya situation. She kissed Lorenzo while he was still coupled up with Yasmin. She went further than most islanders do after a slip-up like that, kissing him in bed rather than a quick peck on the terrace. After, she chose to bring it up with Yasmin herself, rather than waiting to be caught out. Yasmin’s clipped reply that Priya didn’t owe her an explanation because she was “in a couple with him” set the tone for what came next, and the group quickly turned the moment into proof that Priya couldn’t be trusted.
Lola, the villa’s resident ex-detective, led the charge, accusing Priya of double standards and treating nearly everything she says with suspicion. Some viewers think Lola’s just calling out a pattern nobody else wants to name. Others point out that Priya actually owned up to what happened instead of hiding it, and argue that judging her more harshly than islanders who’ve done similar — or worse — without coming clean feels less like accountability and more like scapegoating. Both readings hold up, which is exactly why the storyline has stuck around so long: it’s genuinely hard to tell where calling someone out ends and ganging up begins.
Bombshell resentment: are the new girls the problem, or just easy scapegoats?
A new girl arrives, a guy’s attention drifts, and she becomes the villain of the week, even though he’s the one who was never that locked in to begin with. It’s one of the most reliable patterns on the show, mostly because blaming the bombshell is a far more comfortable story than admitting your own partner isn’t as interested in being faithful to his current couple.
Love Island USA’s Casa Amor twist this season built the dynamic into the format itself, splitting the villa in two and showing the girls live footage of their partners getting close to brand-new arrivals. The bombshells weren’t subtle about their plans, “to take one of their men,” and for girls to watch their backs. When the newcomers are that upfront about their intentions, it’s hard to blame anyone already coupled up for getting defensive fast. However, it is important to remember that this is what being a bombshell entails.
Melanie Moreno doesn’t want the label
View this post on InstagramBefore the season even started, Melanie used her cast intro to dismiss the whole concept. A real woman who genuinely supports other women, she said, “never needs to call herself a girl’s girl,” it just shows up in how she treats people. The clip went down well with fans, several of whom noted that the phrase itself had become a red flag in past seasons.
A few episodes later, she pulled the new arrival Cobrin aside for a private chat the moment Cobrin entered the villa. It snowballed into a public clash with Beatriz that left a chunk of the audience calling her a bully. Some of it traces back to jealousy Melanie admitted to herself, after her own partner pulled a different newcomer aside without telling her first. None of it is unforgivable, but the timing is bad. The islander built her whole intro around not needing the label and ended up demonstrating exactly the behaviour the label is supposed to guard against.
Read also: Love, lust or clout? What romance reality TV is really selling, and why we keep watching
The Huda/Olanndria issue
Love Island USA’s previous season gave us “Hurricane Huda” — Huda Mustafa’s relationship with Jeremiah made her the breakout villain of the year, and while a lot of that criticism was earned, several commentators also pointed out that as a visibly Muslim, Palestinian-American woman, the language used against her carried an extra, uncomfortable weight.
The real test of her “girl’s girl” credentials, though, came after the cameras stopped rolling. In October 2025, a livestream clip surfaced showing Huda and her boyfriend laughing right after a viewer used a racial slur aimed at her former castmate, Olandria Carthen. Huda’s first response was claiming she hadn’t heard the comment clearly. It was widely read as an attempt to minimise what happened, and she ended up issuing a second statement that directly named and apologised to Carthen.
Huda Beauty cut its partnership with her within days. It wasn’t even the first time the two had clashed over race; Carthen had already called Huda out at the Season 7 reunion for failing to properly address the racist comments her own fans had aimed at Carthen.
Carthen, meanwhile, became the season’s genuine girl’s girl story — paired off with Nic Vansteenberghe in one of the franchise’s most-loved couples, and consistently the one fans credit with handling every conflict, on camera and off, with more composure than she ever got recognised for.
Love Island UK series 13 cast via @loveisland on X The easiest label to claim, the hardest to keep
The funny thing about the girl’s girl label is that the villa always exposes it faster than any of us watching at home ever could. Saying it during week-one introductions costs nothing because every contestant knows it’s the right thing to say to the camera. The actual test only shows up later: when a bombshell walks in, when a partner’s eyes start wandering, or when another woman becomes competition instead of an ally. That’s the moment viewers stop caring what an islander calls herself and start watching what she actually does about it.
So, over to you: who’s actually passing the girl’s girl test this season? Which Islanders have genuinely had the other women’s backs, and who’s been performing sisterhood for the cameras?
Read more: Love Island USA & UK — these are Islanders poised to become the internet’s new obsession
React to this post!The post Who’s a true girl’s girl, and who’s only performing on Love Island this season? appeared first on Marie Claire Nigeria.
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