If you spend too much money at the mall but get tons of discounts from sales, that’s girl math. If you eat just a handful of almonds and a pint of ice cream for dinner, that’s girl dinner. And if you can’t hold down a job and only care about scrolling TikTok and dating, well, who can blame you? You’re just a girl! It’s a phenomenon that’s been going on for a while now, and it’s something scary to see in an age of fascist rollbacks of rights and the rise of a dictator.
Our societal idea of what a woman can be has shifted along with the general culture: to the right. With the rise of tradwife-ism (the ultraconservative role of a married homemaker who values her husband over herself, in line with “traditional” gender roles) lurking in the periphery of women’s online spaces, you can’t get far in a doomscroll on TikTok without hearing allusions to Nara Smith, infamous tradwife icon.
But falling for the tradwife agenda is too obvious for some, especially those who self-identify as feminists. They’re independent women, and perhaps aren’t even attracted to men or interested in marrying. So the algorithm needs to adjust. We see “girl pretty vs. boy pretty” and “divine femininity” circling on our feeds, promoting a wave of gender essentialism that promotes transphobia and sets feminism back decades.
Maybe you recall the rise of “bimbo feminism”: cute, pink, and girly, but seemingly self-aware. Influencers like Chrissy Chlapecka promote feminist and left-wing ideals in a sparkly, hot pink, and scantily clad package that appeals to young women, yes, but also the patriarchal standard of what a woman should be. And even while reclaiming the word bimbo, you can’t divorce it from its meaning of an attractive but unintelligent woman. And bimbo feminists typically don’t try to remove the air-headed stupidity from their aesthetic: TikToker @nikitadumptruck makes videos explaining complicated topics “for the girls” by greatly simplifying the concept, relating it back to stereotypically feminine hobbies through asinine metaphors, and speaking in a valley girl type accent. Her bio proudly proclaims her as “professor at bimbo university.”
This take isn’t going to be popular, but it needs to be said: this isn’t the pinnacle of feminism so many like to make it out to be. How can it be? You can hit all the right talking points in your content, but wrapping it up in a pink bow tinged with misogyny is glaringly missing the point.
There’s this idea that anything a woman chooses to do is inherently a feminist choice by virtue of her being a woman, aptly named “choice feminism.” It isn’t accurate. You can dumb yourself down and claim that you’re bad at math or can’t work in certain fields because you’re “just a girl,” but the choice to do so isn’t a feminist choice. It’s just sad. You can choose if you want to shave or if you want to work because feminists fought for your ability to make that decision. That doesn’t mean that following the patriarchal standard is feminist.
And while bimbo feminism is relatively new, the phenomenon isn’t. In 1792, Mary Wollstonecraft wrote in “A Vindication of the Rights of Woman,” “My own sex, I hope, will excuse me, if I treat them like rational creatures, instead of flattering their FASCINATING graces, and viewing them as if they were in a state of perpetual childhood, unable to stand alone… I wish to persuade women to endeavour to acquire strength, both of mind and body, and to convince them, that the soft phrases, susceptibility of heart, delicacy of sentiment, and refinement of taste, are almost synonymous with epithets of weakness, and that those beings who are only the objects of pity and that kind of love, which has been termed its sister, will soon become objects of contempt.” Wollstonecraft not only criticizes men, rightfully, throughout the book, but also women complicit in their own oppression for the social rewards they reap from it.
The fact of the matter is that there is only so much reward for internalizing misogyny, a diminishing return for promoting your own subjugation, especially when you frame it as radical or feminist. Things are getting worse, our rights are being stripped away, and intersectionality is disintegrating around us. “Not all men” is back in the cultural zeitgeist, transphobia is at a critical high, and some truly believe women should lose their right to vote.
It’s scary right now, and we need to remember the tenets of feminist theory that will help us fight back against fascism: that women are, above all, people. People who are flawed and diverse and deserving of respect and freedom and equality. That we have every right to exist in the public without performance for an audience whose values are determined by men. Think critically about your choices and why you have them. Maybe it will bring us back into a movement towards what we deserve.
139
Portland State's Student Run Monthly Magazine
I’m Just a Girl!: When Pseudo-Feminism Leads Us Down the Alt-Right Pipeline
If you spend too much money at the mall but get tons of discounts from sales, that’s girl math. If you eat just a handful of almonds and a pint of ice cream for dinner, that’s girl dinner. And if you can’t hold down a job and only care about scrolling TikTok and dating, well, who can blame you? You’re just a girl! It’s a phenomenon that’s been going on for a while now, and it’s something scary to see in an age of fascist rollbacks of rights and the rise of a dictator.
Our societal idea of what a woman can be has shifted along with the general culture: to the right. With the rise of tradwife-ism (the ultraconservative role of a married homemaker who values her husband over herself, in line with “traditional” gender roles) lurking in the periphery of women’s online spaces, you can’t get far in a doomscroll on TikTok without hearing allusions to Nara Smith, infamous tradwife icon.
But falling for the tradwife agenda is too obvious for some, especially those who self-identify as feminists. They’re independent women, and perhaps aren’t even attracted to men or interested in marrying. So the algorithm needs to adjust. We see “girl pretty vs. boy pretty” and “divine femininity” circling on our feeds, promoting a wave of gender essentialism that promotes transphobia and sets feminism back decades.
Maybe you recall the rise of “bimbo feminism”: cute, pink, and girly, but seemingly self-aware. Influencers like Chrissy Chlapecka promote feminist and left-wing ideals in a sparkly, hot pink, and scantily clad package that appeals to young women, yes, but also the patriarchal standard of what a woman should be. And even while reclaiming the word bimbo, you can’t divorce it from its meaning of an attractive but unintelligent woman. And bimbo feminists typically don’t try to remove the air-headed stupidity from their aesthetic: TikToker @nikitadumptruck makes videos explaining complicated topics “for the girls” by greatly simplifying the concept, relating it back to stereotypically feminine hobbies through asinine metaphors, and speaking in a valley girl type accent. Her bio proudly proclaims her as “professor at bimbo university.”
This take isn’t going to be popular, but it needs to be said: this isn’t the pinnacle of feminism so many like to make it out to be. How can it be? You can hit all the right talking points in your content, but wrapping it up in a pink bow tinged with misogyny is glaringly missing the point.
There’s this idea that anything a woman chooses to do is inherently a feminist choice by virtue of her being a woman, aptly named “choice feminism.” It isn’t accurate. You can dumb yourself down and claim that you’re bad at math or can’t work in certain fields because you’re “just a girl,” but the choice to do so isn’t a feminist choice. It’s just sad. You can choose if you want to shave or if you want to work because feminists fought for your ability to make that decision. That doesn’t mean that following the patriarchal standard is feminist.
And while bimbo feminism is relatively new, the phenomenon isn’t. In 1792, Mary Wollstonecraft wrote in “A Vindication of the Rights of Woman,” “My own sex, I hope, will excuse me, if I treat them like rational creatures, instead of flattering their FASCINATING graces, and viewing them as if they were in a state of perpetual childhood, unable to stand alone… I wish to persuade women to endeavour to acquire strength, both of mind and body, and to convince them, that the soft phrases, susceptibility of heart, delicacy of sentiment, and refinement of taste, are almost synonymous with epithets of weakness, and that those beings who are only the objects of pity and that kind of love, which has been termed its sister, will soon become objects of contempt.” Wollstonecraft not only criticizes men, rightfully, throughout the book, but also women complicit in their own oppression for the social rewards they reap from it.
The fact of the matter is that there is only so much reward for internalizing misogyny, a diminishing return for promoting your own subjugation, especially when you frame it as radical or feminist. Things are getting worse, our rights are being stripped away, and intersectionality is disintegrating around us. “Not all men” is back in the cultural zeitgeist, transphobia is at a critical high, and some truly believe women should lose their right to vote.
It’s scary right now, and we need to remember the tenets of feminist theory that will help us fight back against fascism: that women are, above all, people. People who are flawed and diverse and deserving of respect and freedom and equality. That we have every right to exist in the public without performance for an audience whose values are determined by men. Think critically about your choices and why you have them. Maybe it will bring us back into a movement towards what we deserve.
The Crime of Teenage Girlhood
A Dawn Summers Retrospective
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