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Everyone’s a girl’s girl on TV. Until they’re not.

Reality shows have a long history of pitting women against each other. Can anything change that?

Once upon a time, women were asked if they had danced with the devil and howled at the moon. Now, a more important question is being asked: Is she a girl’s girl?

Is Amanda Batula of Bravo’s Summer House a girl’s girl? How about Tituba? Anne Boleyn? Do you think Athena, goddess of wisdom and warfare, was Team Ciara? Even if she was not really a girl’s girl to Medusa?

Girl’s girl is, in its simplest and most earnest form, shorthand for a woman who prioritizes her female friends as opposed to the men in her life. The term acknowledges that female friendship is special — magical even — and should be cherished. Girl’s girls don’t fall into society’s trap of pitting women against each other. Being a girl’s girl is a way to say screw misogyny without having to wade into complicated feminist theory.

As someone who watches entirely too much reality TV, it’s always exciting to me when something breaks Bravo containment and becomes a mainstream, pop culture story. For the past few months, that something has been the Ciara Miller-Amanda Batula-West Wilson love triangle on Summer House.

I’ve watched people try to catch up on the deep lore of this Bravo show, wrap their heads around the messiness, and quickly sympathize with Miller’s devastatingly beautiful breakdown in front of an Hermés store.

But the most striking thing to me has been how this saga has crystallized the “girl’s girl” phenomenon — a term that’s been a load-bearing pillar in reality TV conflicts for years, and has gotten more use in real life more recently. On the surface, it’s quite simple: You either are or aren’t a girl’s girl. But as Batula and this Summer House mess have shown us, one can’t exist without the other.

“Girl’s girl” can be a proud affirmation (I’m a girl’s girl). It is seeing someone scorn the most beautiful woman in your life and defending her vigorously. It’s also a stern assessment of loyalty (She is not a girl’s girl).

Our collective desire to celebrate girl’s girls comes from a good place. But it can also be wielded like a weapon, or a mafia threat — a way to collectively punish women who fail to live up to these standards.

How reality TV fell in love with a girl’s girl

The girl’s girl isn’t a new phenomenon, especially on the cable network Bravo and its streamer sister Peacock.

Back on season 10 of the Real Housewives of New York (2018), Ramona Singer famously yelled at co-star Bethenny Frankel, telling her “you don’t support other women” after Frankel made fun of her skincare line and did not, in Singer’s eyes, thank a fellow Housewife profusely enough for procuring her a Christmas........

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