Is Love Island's Whitney Adebayo putting a much-needed feminist face to 'bad bitches'?

Being young, free and 23 means one thing at 9pm on six out of seven nights of the week. No, it's not living it up with my girl friends at a fancy London bar. It means planting myself in front of my TV for another helping of cracking on, closing off and putting all the eggs in all the baskets. You've guessed it. It's Love Island time. Whether you love it, loathe it, or love to loathe it, the addictive draw of this often eye-rollingly daft show is undeniable and it's safe to say that this season has me in a chokehold.

Amongst all the antics of this year's most likely to get a *insert brand here* deal singles, there's been a certain something that has caught my eye, or ear maybe, and that is Ella Thomas and Whitney Adebayo's repeated reference to themselves as 'bad bitches'. Whether it's handling meeting the parents like a pro or bringing Ouzy See back from Casa Amor to show Tyrique Hyde who's boss, it's giving bad bitch, apparently.

In fact, this season's 'bad bitch' moments culminated in Whitney and Tyrique serenading the entire villa in the Love Island talent show (which needless to say, is giving the chaos of X Factor's worst auditions a run for their money) with a surprisingly catchy song (second only to Chris and Kem's viral smash Little Bit Leave It) centering around the eponymous 'bad bitch' which initially I had mixed feelings about. Well the song itself was, without question, a bop. But in 2023, do women want to be called bad bitches?

I suppose the answer to that question is in how you define the term. Are figures like Whitney Adebayo and Ella Thomas - who reach thousands of young women every night - helping to reclaim the term, and in the most dulcet of tones, I hasten to add? Is a bad bitch a woman who rejects the derogatory connotations of being a bitch? After all, this is a term used for years by proprietors of our patriarchal society to describe women who take zero shit in the workplace or used to dismiss women who hold others to account. Remember the patriarchy would have us believe that an empowered woman is a bitch, but an empowered man is a boss. Is it applause all round then for Whitney's use of the term to highlight when women take control of their love lives and chat back to the men who disrespect them?

I suppose if a bad bitch is an empowered woman who speaks her mind and defends what she feels is right, this label can only be a good thing, right? But are the terms 'bad' and 'bitch' ever really detachable from their original meaning? Why does an empowered woman automatically equal bad, or a bitch, for that matter? This dilemma is prompting the feelings I had for the supposedly empowering term 'girl boss', as if the term 'boss' automatically indicates a man and the prefix is the necessary to show that maybe, just maybe, a WOMAN (not girl, thank you) may also be vaguely capable of being a boss. Thanks patriarchy.

Maybe Whitney and Ella's behaviour this season has been giving bad bitch. But also, being empowered women could also just make them empowered women. After all, I must admit I do resent the association of being honest, being a loyal friend or being a woman speaking up against injustice with being bad or a bitch. That said, I can't help but admire the female islanders having their moment in what they deem making bad bitch moves. I suppose whatever your opinion on the phrase, we can probably agree that Whitney has been become a poster child for women speaking their minds this season and I for one hope her and Tyrique's feminist anthem sticks.