Lexicon ·
lover girl
noun, also 'lover girl era'
- Stated meaning
- Someone openly earnest about romance, who wants to be courted and says so.
- Operating meaning
- Romance declared as a personality in advance, so that the courtship it expects has a standard before anyone has proposed one.
- Origin
- Older slang, recorded in 1952 as the female equivalent of lover-boy. Its current sense was described by i-D in 2022, and surveyed for by Bumble in 2024.
- Antonyms
- decentering men
The phrase is old and the meaning is new. Green’s Dictionary of Slang (opens in a new window) records lover-girl from 1952 as “the female equivalent of lover-boy.” In December 2022 i-D (opens in a new window) described its current holders as “devout monogamists committed to a fairy tale relationship filled with courtship and companionship,” and reported that they were “in crisis.”
The market took the crisis as a segment. In 2024, Mashable reported (opens in a new window), “Sixty percent of UK women surveyed by Bumble identify as Lover Girls and are ‘celebrating romance with renewed enthusiasm,’ according to the dating app.” Its relationship expert added that “It’s historically been a bit ‘uncool’ to admit that you are romantic — but this shouldn’t be the case.” A type the press had filed as in decline came back 2 years later as a majority, counted by a company whose product is the place romance is supposed to start.
Under load, the label discloses the terms before the first date: courtship expected, monogamy assumed, earnestness permitted. That is more than most profiles disclose. It is issued as an identity, though, so the other party receives the standard and the person together, and cannot fall short of the first without appearing to reject the second. Its opposite number, decentering men, keeps the same ledger and reads it from the other column.