What Does It Mean to be a "Girl's Girl"?

I’ve always assumed I was one: a girl’s girl, that is.

A short list of my credentials includes:

1. The vast majority of my close friendships are with women.

2. I host a podcast about the often overlooked ways women show up for one another, even while being pitted against each other.

3. I’m firmly #TeamPaige

I suppose I’ve always thought of being a girl’s girl as a set of actions more than a state of being. A girl’s girl shows up for the women in her life, hypes them up when they’re winning and lends a shoulder when they’re struggling. She has her girl’s back in an argument, even when her girl is in the wrong. When that argument is with a man, she assumes the man is guilty until proven innocent (and probably even after that). She never says things like “I don’t have a lot of girl friends” or “girls don’t really like me” because girls do like her…because she’s a girls girl.

Here are some things I didn’t think were included under the girl’s girl umbrella:

• Refraining from critiquing another woman

• Pretending to be friends with a woman simply because of her proximity to others you are close to

• Picking the side of a woman you barely know, over a man you’ve built a real friendship with, when said woman and man break up

While I can understand why someone might put some or all of these in their “women supporting women” bucket, for me these actions feel performative at best, and actively harmful at worst. Let’s take each of these in turn (and before we do I’ll note that this post was spurred by the recent events on Summer House, a Bravo show I’m obsessed with and encourage you to get into if you haven’t already.)

Refraining from critiquing another woman:

Whenever I offer a public critique of another woman (be it Kristen Bell or Brooke Schofield or Gayle King) there is always someone in the comments raising the “girl’s girl” flag. It comes in many forms: sometimes with the actual words “You’re not being a girl’s girl,” sometimes with a more subtle “I don’t see why we’re commenting on this,” always with a clear implication: women who support women don’t publicly critique their choices.

I fundamentally disagree with this take. Women are often the most qualified people to critique another woman’s choices because we have the lived experience to understand and explain the context of that choice. Let’s take Gayle’s ill-fated space adventure; I think Gayle probably had very good intentions in participating in this expensive trip to nowhere, but the critiques she’s receiving are not only valid, but important for all women to see, digest, and understand. Jeff Bezos, a man, tried to drum up support for his company and his fiancée by touting a “historic” all-female flight to space, and these women’s public reputations fell victim to his narcissistic scheme. There’s a lesson in there for all of us, and that’s a lesson I’d prefer to learn from other women.

Pretending to be friends with women in your proximity

As someone who considers herself to be a very good judge of character, I take great pride in having a top-tier friend group. It is elite. It is time-tested. The ties I’ve painstakingly built and weather-tested are deeply important to me, and when I do add another friend to my list it’s a BFD, because it doesn’t happen often. I think it would be doing a real disservice to these friendships to bestow that title on any Jane Brenda or Lisa who happened to come into my orbit.

Beyond that, I’ve seen it happen too many times where women make it to their thirties thinking they have a slew of close friendships, only to look up and realize they were never as close to those women as they thought. They were always a part of a friendship circle, and never investigated the strength of those ties to any one individual. Having watched it happen to a few people I know, I can tell you it looks lonely as hell. So I refrain from pretending — not because I’m rude, but because I’m honest. Being my friend takes more than simply being around, and acknowledging that shouldn’t strip me of my “girl’s girl” card.

Picking the woman’s side in a breakup over the man, despite being friends with the man

This one is related to the point above, and here’s where I’ll draw on the situation unfolding on this season of Summer House. In case you missed it, there’s a new girl on the show named Lexi who has fallen for fellow castmate Jesse Soloman. Jesse is, to put it simply, a fuckboy. He joined last season and immediately began hitting on Paige, a woman who was very publicly spoken-for at the time. He flirted with every girl he encountered and spoke about relationships in a far off, maybe-when-I’m-ready sort of way. Despite all that, he seems (seemed?) genuinely likeable. He’s a cancer survivor with a contagious live-laugh-love vibe, and he built genuine friendships with almost all of his castmates last season.

You probably see where I’m going with this. Things with he and Lexi take a turn for the worst, as things always do when you’re dealing with a man-child who isn’t ready for a serious relationship, and while Lexi’s certainly upset with Jesse about it, recent interviews give the impression she’s also upset with the girls in the house for not checking in. She’s aimed more specific ire at Ciara, who has, in recent months, been photographed hanging out with Jesse (because how dare she hang out with her friend, I guess?)

If Ciara and Lexi were friends, you could definitely argue that the above is a clear violation of girl code. But not only are they not friends, Ciara and Jesse are. So I see no violation of said code. What’s more, when it comes to break ups I’m a pretty firm believer in the “I’m leaving with who I came with” rule…because otherwise, what kind of friend am I? The entire point of the “girl’s girl” trope, in my opinion, is to celebrate the type of women who other women can trust. But how trustworthy can I possibly be if I throw my actual friends away simply to keep my “girl’s girl” title?

I guess for me it comes down to this: I support the women in my life by being loyal, and the women in my orbit by being real.

I think that makes me a girl’s girl…do you?