Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. (US, also B-drinker, bee-drinker) a dancehall hostess whose primary job is not to dance but to promote liquor sales to the clientele.

1935		A.J. Pollock Und. Speaks 6/2: Bee drinker female entertainers in night clubs, who drink cold tea camouflaged as liquor, for which customers pay the full price.
1936		H. Corey Farewell, Mr Gangster! 276: Bee drinker – a night-club hostess who drinks cold tea but for which the sucker pays a whisky price.
1939		D. Maurer ‘Prostitutes and Criminal Argots’ in Lang. Und. (1981) 117/1: bee-drinker. A girl who receives a percentage of the large bills she runs up on customers in a restaurant.
1951		C. Stoker Thicker ’n Thieves 64: Nate Bass [was a] Main Street bar owner and director of a covey of B-Girls (girls who hang out in saloons to facilitate and expand the sale of drinks to lonely men).
1959		‘Monroe Fry’ Sex, Vice & Business 24: A "hostess" is a B-girl and a B-girl is a bar girl hired to keep you drinking and buying drinks for her at approximately one dollar a shot. A girl's ability is measured [. . .] by the number of drinks she can persuade the customer to buy for himself and her.
1965		K. Marlowe Mr Madam (1967) 103: I hustled the visiting club owners for drinks and they got a laugh out of it. No B-girl could have accomplished that.
1967		(con. 1950s) McAleer & Dickson Unit Pride (1981) 277: B-girls moved from table to table, trying, with promises, to entice people to buy them drinks.
1971		Winick & Kinsie Lively Commerce 171: Bars may employ or provide a convenient setting [...] for B-girls who encourage men to buy drinks.
1977		R. Coover Public Burning (1979) 271: The b-girl retaliates by conking him over the head.
1981		(con. 1930s) O’Day & Eells High Times Hard Times 46: I told Blondie I wasn’t born to be a B-drinker. The customers aside, I might have reacted better if the drinks had been real champagne and whiskey instead of ginger ale and tea.
1985		N. Pileggi Wiseguy (2001) 70: Some B-girls in one place started hustling drinks out of us.
1996		(con. 1949) G. Pelecanos Big Blowdown (1999) 207: A B-girl had managed to get some sucker to buy her a watered-down highball.

2. (orig. US, also B-broad) a part-time prostitute, who frequents bars and uses them as a base for soliciting; thus B-case, a charge of soliciting; B-girled, of a bar, frequented by b-girls.

1947		B. Schulberg Harder They Fall (1971) 175: Dingy bars with raucous juke-boxes and blousy B-girls.
c.1951		N. Algren ‘Watch Out for Daddy’ in Entrapment (2009) 141: Lucille, a teen-age lush who [...] Enright uses as a B-broad because the chick drinks hard stuff along with the marks.
1951		C. Stoker Thicker ’n Thieves 184: The department’s main source of revenue during this period was the ‘shaking down’ of bar owners on Main and East Fifth Streets to allow B-Girls, a polite name for prostitutes, who are proscribed by law, to operate.
1956		N. Algren Walk on the Wild Side 172: Say you don’t go for cokes, you’re on hard liquor. Okay, be a B-broad and get drunk every night.
1963		J. Rechy City of Night 180: Stores and counter-restaurants, B-girled bars, Red-devil hotdog stands.
1967		W. Manus Mott the Hoople 180: ‘What do you say, doll? Want to go upstairs?’ It was the B-girl, a big shtup of a blonde, sitting on my lap.
1981		J. Ellroy Brown’s Requiem 109: The Gaffany dame was a semi-pro b-girl.
1990		S. Morgan Homeboy 50: She copped one B case too many.
2001		(con. 1964–8) J. Ellroy Cold Six Thousand 256: Milt greased bellhops/barkeeps/B-girls.
2021		J. Ellroy Widespread Panic 176: They poked B-girls from the Kibitz Room.

3. (US gay) the homosexual equivalent of sense 1.

1965

A. James America’s Homosexual Underground 84: The queens were expected to hustle the customers for drinks between performances. They were nothing better than B-girls.

4. (US black) the female equivalent of the B-boy n.

1984		Run DMC ‘Hollis Crew’ 🎵 The word wizard and the chief rock roller / Bad b-boy made for the b-girls.
1991		N. Krulik Hammer and Vanilla Ice 30: That includes both black and white b-boys and b-girls.
2002		‘Touré’ Portable Promised Land (ms.) 151: We Words (My Favorite Things) [...] Homeboy. Homegirl. B-Boy. B-Girl. Brotherman. Sistuhgirl. Soul brother. Soul sister.