A Bond girl is a character (or the actress portraying a character) who is a love interest and/or female sidekick of James Bond in a novel, film, or video game. Bond girls occasionally have names that are double entendres or puns, such as Pussy Galore, Plenty O'Toole, Xenia Onatopp, or Holly Goodhead, and are considered "ubiquitous symbol[s] of glamour and sophistication."
There is no set rule on what kind of person a Bond girl will be or what role she will play. She may be an ally or an enemy of Bond, pivotal to the mission or simply eye candy. There are female characters such as Judi Dench's M, and Camille Montes, a Bolivian intelligence agent who teams up with Bond in Quantum of Solace, who are not romantic interests of Bond, and hence not strictly Bond girls. However, it has been argued that M's pivotal role in the plot of Skyfall qualifies her as a Bond girl or Bond woman.
Nearly all of Ian Fleming's Bond novels and short stories include one or more female characters who can be said to qualify as Bond girls, most of whom have been adapted for the screen. While Fleming's Bond girls have some individual traits (at least in their literary forms), they also have a great many characteristics in common. One of these is age: The typical Bond girl is in her early to mid-twenties, roughly ten years younger than Bond, who seems to be perennially in his mid-thirties. Examples include Solitaire (25),Tatiana Romanova (24),Vivienne "Viv" Michel (23), and Kissy Suzuki (23). The youngest Bond girl (though she and Bond do not sleep together) may be Gala Brand; she is named for the cruiser in which her father is serving at the time of her birth. Bond's youngest sexual partner in the books is Mariko Ichiban, an 18-year-old masseuse in You Only Live Twice. The eldest Bond girls are Pussy Galore, whom Bond speculates is in her early 30s, and 29-year-old Domino Vitali.