Why Love Island’s Lucie insisting she "doesn’t get on with girls" is problematic
Love Island’s Lucie Donlan has caused a stir this week after claiming that she doesn’t have any female friends. The Islander's admission came after she was accused of isolating herself from the other women in the villa, responding that she has "never had a girl friend" and that "girls are drama" while men, on the other hand, "say it how it is".
Lucie’s view has caused a social media storm, with many leaping to her defence. Twitter users further rallied around her when Lucie's on-show partner Joe Garratt took her aside to express his discomfort when it came to her friendships with male contestants. Viewers saw Lucie break down in tears after Joe labelled the time she spent with Tommy Fury "strange", adding that he was "not happy with it".
"Leave Lucie alone, who cares if she’s friends with someone male or female?" jumped in one Twitter user, while another added "Lucie actually speaks the truth that boys are so much better friends than girls". It seems that swathes of viewers agree with Lucie’s standpoint, and rightly point out that it’s no one’s business who the Cornish surfing model chooses to befriend.
However, in my opinion, Lucie’s insistence that she's a "guy's girl" plays into a much more worrying narrative when it comes to society’s view of women. It appears that Lucie’s issue seems to go far beyond the specific women she’s been lumped in a villa with for the duration of Love Island. More than just happening to dislike them, her words suggest she has written off women almost entirely, stressing that she has little interest in connecting with them and that she finds their characteristics off-putting.
If this is truly how Lucie feels - that she has absolutely no interest in engaging with her 'drama-driven' fellow females - then her view reflects the endemic issue of internalised misogyny. The patriarchal structures we are all accustomed to often provoke individuals to enact sexist behaviours towards themselves and those of the same gender, and it's arguable that Lucie is demonstrating exactly that in the Love Island villa. It feels to me like she has fallen for an age-old narrative of women being bitchy; of being annoying; of being less upfront than men. Instead, Lucie is drawn to the appeal of being a "guy's girl", the kind of woman who is more aligned with her male counterparts and is therefore somehow superior to her whining, stirring, not telling-it-like-it-is fellow women.
But what she forgets is that she, too, is a woman, and by tarring all women with the "drama" brush, she by default labels herself. Don't we live in a society where women are already far too readily labelled without pointing the finger of patriarchy at ourselves?
The trope of the "guy's girl" is one that is often impressed upon women who prefer the company of men. Of course, there isn’t a problem with finding that females are sparse in your friendship circle - there are many reasons why you might find men to be a more significant part of your peer-group. But what I think Lucie fails to see is that nothing is black and white; there are plenty of women who will be unable to relate to the tired template of drama-fuelled bitching, and plenty of men who love a good gossip. There are women who embrace characteristics and interests considered traditionally "male" and vice versa. By writing off the women she meets without making efforts to get to know them, Lucie may be unwittingly missing out on the complexities and nuances of fifty per cent of the population - and a pretty fantastic fifty per cent if you ask me.
Although Lucie’s decision not to engage with the villa’s women may be a personal choice - she is absolutely entitled to get on better with Tommy than with Amy, after all - it's the sentiment of her reasoning as to why that fits into a much wider and far more damaging stereotype of gender.
Women are given a pretty rough-ride from the outset, with clichéd depictions of who we are as a collective impacting everything from our sex lives to our pay packet. Similarly, men suffer significantly as a result the social norms hoisted upon them. Societal expectation that they don’t express their emotions is frequently blamed for the proliferation of male suicide and a health crisis caused by male reluctance to visit doctors.
My own circle of friends is incredibly varied, consisting of both men and women. Although I typically find that I form bonds more easily with other women, I see an incredible and unpredictable swathe of traits in my friends of both genders - and I would be devastated to miss out on them for the arbitrary reason of how they identify.
In order to overturn the damage done by generations of sexism, it is important to acknowledge that no personality type is specific to one gender. My hope is that, should Lucie survive the looming threat of eviction, she opens herself up to the women that she’s sharing a villa with, and the possibility of female friendship. She might find herself pleasantly surprised.
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