Helena Ford keeps getting called a “good time girl” on season 12 of Love Island, and while I don’t doubt the harmless intentions of the other Islanders, it turns out the phrase has a somewhat offensive meaning.
Helena’s been called a few things by viewers so far, namely “evil”, “toxic”, and “rude”, but “good time girl” was actually branded to her by her fellow Love Islanders. Her boyf Harry Cooksley referred to her as such in an earlier episode, as did her nemesis Shakira.
“For me, with Helena, it’s like, I don’t know if she’s just a good time girl. Like, as I know, the more I’m getting to know her, like,” he said.
“I’m having a good time, but I wanna have a long time. What I’m learning about her lifestyle, and like, what she does, like, she goes out a lot. We had the conversations – you were all there. She had a threesome.”
Credit: Love Island
Even people on Twitter have jumped on the bandwagon, with one person writing: “Oh Shakira was right, Helena really is a good time girl.”
In the context of Love Island, it seems that good time girl just refers to a woman who enjoys herself, but as it turns out, there are other meanings for the phrase.
Okay, so here’s what ‘good time girl’ actually means
According to the Cambridge Dictionary, a good time girl is “a young woman who is only interested in pleasure, not in serious activities, work, etc.”
But, historically, good time girls was a slang term given to sex workers, prostitutes, and basically any woman offering sexual pleasures. It was also a method of referring to prostitutes in an SFW way, without giving away that you were exchanging money for sex.
Though it’s not really used as such anymore, Urban Dictionary also describes the term as a “woman who is in search of cheap (if possible, cost- and pain-free) fun, particularly featuring easy and good sex, very interested in the financial generosity of d*ckheads.”
There’s even a short film about it under the same name, with Laura Dern starring as a prostitute who, along with a group of other women, seeks revenge on a group of men.
Credit:
Courtney Hoffman
It’s very unlikely that Harry and Shakira know the lore behind good time girls, after all, they’re not exactly the reality TV personalities you’d associate with random etymology knowledge. The offside rule and how to do a cut-crease, sure.
So, maybe let’s not call Love Island’s Helena a good time girl on Twitter?
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Featured image credit: ITV
