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TikTok's Crisis of Femininity · Stuff Mom Never Told You

0:05
Speaker 1: Hey, this is Annie and Samantha.
0:06
Speaker 2: I'm welcome to Stephan Never Told You a production of iHeartRadio,
0:18
Speaker 2: and today we are so happy to once again be
0:21
Speaker 2: joined by our contrude Deer, the wonderful, the lovely Joey.
0:25
Speaker 1: Welcome, Joey.
0:26
Speaker 3: Hey, Hello, thanks having me it has it has, but
0:33
Speaker 3: super excited i'd be talking about TikTok once again.
0:37
Speaker 1: Happy to be back on.
0:39
Speaker 2: Well, I'm I'm very excited to learn about it. This
0:43
Speaker 2: is something I kind of know tangentially about because I've
0:48
Speaker 2: heard jokes about it, and I have what I call
0:51
Speaker 2: TikTok friends and they let me know about it. But
0:55
Speaker 2: I'm going to learn a lot today, So I'm counting
0:59
Speaker 2: on you, and I know you did a lot of
1:00
Speaker 2: research for this, and you have quite you were talking
1:04
Speaker 2: about maybe a whole other other episodes that might come in.
1:07
Speaker 4: Well, we're gonna this was originally came to you guys.
1:12
Speaker 4: With this, I was sort of like, Hey, let's do
1:16
Speaker 4: something about the whole like girl, dinner girl, insert word trends.
1:22
Speaker 4: And then this very very soon spiraled into a much
1:25
Speaker 4: bigger episode because I think there is something really weird
1:31
Speaker 4: happening on TikTok. And just kind of online in general
1:36
Speaker 4: regarding femininity and womanhood and girlhood and feminism and all
1:43
Speaker 4: of these kind of big concepts.
1:48
Speaker 1: So I am calling this.
1:50
Speaker 4: Episode when my kind of working title I put in
1:52
Speaker 4: here was TikTok's Crisis of Femininity.
1:56
Speaker 1: Because I think, and I specifically, you.
1:59
Speaker 4: Know, white heterosexual cisgender femininity, but kind of what is
2:05
Speaker 4: presenting itself is this sort of general just crisis of
2:07
Speaker 4: femininity using of course, like pulling that from the term
2:11
Speaker 4: like crisis of masculinity, which is something that I think
2:14
Speaker 4: gets used a lot to talk about kind of historical
2:18
Speaker 4: moments and also contemporary stuff that often is just referring
2:22
Speaker 4: to conversations about masculinity and male identity and times when
2:28
Speaker 4: this sort of gender role system is being shaken up
2:32
Speaker 4: and is changing, and particularly how that's tied to like
2:36
Speaker 4: capitalism and the changing kind of workforce. And I think,
2:41
Speaker 4: what's happening now again, this is why I'm using this
2:44
Speaker 4: term crisis of femininity that I just assumed people had
2:48
Speaker 4: used before, and I hadn't actually found anyone using this,
2:52
Speaker 4: but I'm sure it's out there. Who's to say, but
2:57
Speaker 4: we're seeing this sort of weird repackage of feminism and
3:02
Speaker 4: women's empowerment into a lot of very binary ideas of
3:08
Speaker 4: womanhood that are often rooted in these very like traditional
3:12
Speaker 4: gender roles and stereotypes. The kind of most obvious case
3:16
Speaker 4: and most like extreme case of this is like the
3:19
Speaker 4: trad wife movement and the stay at home girlfriend and
3:23
Speaker 4: you guys just did a really great episode with Bridget
3:25
Speaker 4: about trad wife.
3:26
Speaker 1: So that I'm gonna be referencing.
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Speaker 4: But I think something that's also happening is this binary
3:32
Speaker 4: is really making its way into a lot of like
3:34
Speaker 4: much more mainstream expressions of like women's empowerment that often
3:39
Speaker 4: like claim to be more progressive and seeing themselves as
3:42
Speaker 4: more progressive. And then I think all of this is
3:44
Speaker 4: kind of happening as a response to a move away
3:50
Speaker 4: from this kind of like quote unquote girl Boss feminism
3:53
Speaker 4: of the twenty tens. And what's happening is we're kind
3:57
Speaker 4: of seeing that, yeah, the girl Boss era kind of
4:00
Speaker 4: is over. It kind of didn't work in a lot
4:03
Speaker 4: of different ways, And in response, I think it's being
4:05
Speaker 4: replaced by this sort of feminism that or perceived feminism
4:12
Speaker 4: that emphasizes consumerism and passivity. And I think it's important
4:16
Speaker 4: to talk about and have these conversations and have these
4:18
Speaker 4: conversations about how we're talking about girlhood and womanhood and femininity,
4:23
Speaker 4: because I think what's happening is sort of it's it's
4:27
Speaker 4: just as kind of dangerousness, just as like unproductive as
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Speaker 4: like the whole girl Boss movement was. And I think
4:32
Speaker 4: we're going to end up where we were kind of
4:34
Speaker 4: in like twenty seventeen twenty eighteen very soon if we
4:38
Speaker 4: don't sort of address what's happening here. So I love
4:42
Speaker 4: that to say, I'm gonna be talking about a lot
4:44
Speaker 4: of different trends here that I'm seeing happening upfront. Just disclaimer,
4:49
Speaker 4: as I often say when I'm on this show, just
4:53
Speaker 4: because I'm criticizing all of these trends does not mean
4:55
Speaker 4: that you're like wrong or in the wrong for like
4:58
Speaker 4: enjoying these things. A lot of these things are sort
5:00
Speaker 4: of like fun on their own, have elements that I
5:05
Speaker 4: can see are empowering to people, but at the same
5:07
Speaker 4: time that just makes it all the more important to
5:10
Speaker 4: look at them critically. So Yeah, to start a couple
5:14
Speaker 4: of weeks ago, I was on Instagram, and this is
5:17
Speaker 4: right around when I had pitched this episode to you guys,
5:20
Speaker 4: and I got this ad that came up that was
5:22
Speaker 4: for like a self care company. I don't remember which
5:26
Speaker 4: one it was exactly. I really wish i'd saved this ad,
5:28
Speaker 4: but I did not. But yeah, I was like a
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Speaker 4: self care company that sells like candles and face masks
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Speaker 4: and bath bombs and all that. And in the ad
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Speaker 4: they used the term quote girl therapy to refer to
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Speaker 4: the products that they were selling, which again were like
5:45
Speaker 4: mostly just candles. And this like set off something and
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Speaker 4: me because you know, if you've been on the internet lately,
5:56
Speaker 4: you probably have seen there have been a lot of
5:59
Speaker 4: these trends. Like the first real big one was like
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Speaker 4: girl dinner, but there's it's gone on into girl hobbies,
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Speaker 4: girl math, girl but now apparently girl therapy, which again,
6:09
Speaker 4: this was the company.
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Speaker 1: Trying to sell candles. That's not therapy.
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Speaker 4: You guys just did just free posted a really great
6:20
Speaker 4: episode about the self care industry that I will put
6:24
Speaker 4: in the notes because I think that kind of did
6:28
Speaker 4: a good job selling up a lot of those issues there.
6:29
Speaker 4: But yeah, this kind of set me on a spiral
6:33
Speaker 4: of looking at all of these girl whatever trends, which Yeah,
6:36
Speaker 4: So first off, let's talk about girl dinner, which back
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Speaker 4: in May, TikTok user Olivia Mahyer made this TikTok about
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Speaker 4: quote girl dinner. The original video is actually a joke
6:48
Speaker 4: about this idea of like quote medieval peasant food just
6:51
Speaker 4: being bread and cheese. And basically the video was her
6:54
Speaker 4: being like, that sounds great, that's my ideal meal, and
6:57
Speaker 4: then she.
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Speaker 1: Says, this is my dinner.
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Speaker 4: I call it a dinner or medieval peasant and then
7:02
Speaker 4: it just shows a bunch of like bread and cheese.
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Speaker 4: Later on TikTok, user at Karma Pilled made a video
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Speaker 4: going this is my meal, I call it girl dinner,
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Speaker 4: and then it's her singing girl dinner and a bunch
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Speaker 4: of different fonts and then that's the sound that.
7:18
Speaker 1: Really blew up.
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Speaker 4: But it was like derivative of this original video. Interestingly,
7:25
Speaker 4: with that video, I didn't realize in it she's holding
7:28
Speaker 4: what looks like a kind of like popsicle stick or
7:30
Speaker 4: something like.
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Speaker 1: It was like an ice cream bar.
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Speaker 4: But yeah, that really took off over the summer and
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Speaker 4: it led to now two hundred and thirty two point
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Speaker 4: eight thousand videos under the girl dinner tag on TikTok.
7:43
Speaker 4: So the girl dinner trend that in and of itself
7:46
Speaker 4: is complicated and like honest, like originally that was gonna
7:48
Speaker 4: be the whole episode. I kind of asked around different
7:55
Speaker 4: people like what they thought about this, and I definitely
7:58
Speaker 4: there was some sort of positive interpretations of it. One
8:01
Speaker 4: that I definitely kept hearing was like, oh, it's this
8:04
Speaker 4: kind of rejection of the idea that womanhood is all
8:08
Speaker 4: about homemaking and it's about you know, making these like
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Speaker 4: perfect elaborate meals all the time. Like it's this trend
8:14
Speaker 4: that is sort of like this is like girl dinner
8:16
Speaker 4: is just kind of like whatever you've got. And you know, Also,
8:20
Speaker 4: something that was interesting was early on, I think a
8:22
Speaker 4: lot of people were showing, you know, meals that weren't traditionally.
8:28
Speaker 1: Things you would associate with like girlhood.
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Speaker 4: You know, a lot of like especially again off of
8:35
Speaker 4: the sort of Girl Boss era, like a lot of
8:37
Speaker 4: it was very much rooted in like diet culture and stuff,
8:39
Speaker 4: and these sort of videos were showing more anti diet
8:43
Speaker 4: culture type meals, like more kind of a lot of
8:45
Speaker 4: like junk food and stuff like that. That being said,
8:50
Speaker 4: the problem is once you make a trend and you
8:52
Speaker 4: put it out into the world, you kind of lose
8:55
Speaker 4: control of it over it, And what we started to
8:57
Speaker 4: see was a lot of people using that.
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Speaker 1: Sound and using the kind of girl dinner thing to show.
9:03
Speaker 4: Essentially one are just like signs of eating disorders or
9:09
Speaker 4: you know, promotion of kind of these unhealthy habits.
9:12
Speaker 1: So that was the first.
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Speaker 4: Sort of thing that happened with that, and then the
9:16
Speaker 4: other was this sort of girl dinner trend turned into
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Speaker 4: all of these different things like girl math, girl hobbies,
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Speaker 4: girl rotting.
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Speaker 1: Basically like taking the.
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Speaker 4: Word girl and then attaching it to another miscellaneous thing,
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Speaker 4: and by putting the word girl in front of it,
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Speaker 4: it was kind of giving it this.
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Speaker 1: Like lighter, unseerious tone.
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Speaker 5: Wait, I need to understand what girl rotting is, because
9:39
Speaker 5: I've heard everything else.
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Speaker 6: This girl riting.
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Speaker 1: So just to talk about I'm gonna get there, Okay.
9:53
Speaker 6: Okay, I need to answer to all these things.
9:56
Speaker 1: I'm like, what, yeah, yeah.
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Speaker 4: But to kind of point to this sort of overall trend,
10:00
Speaker 4: there was an article in Forbes that said, quote girl
10:03
Speaker 4: trends predate TikTok itself. In twenty eight nineteen, Rapper Mecan
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Speaker 4: the Stallion popularized the body positive slogan quote hot Girl Summer,
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Speaker 4: which became an internet meme largely through Twitter and Instagram.
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Speaker 4: Quote being a hot girl is about being unapologetically you,
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Speaker 4: having fun, being confident, living your truth, being the life
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Speaker 4: of the party, et cetera. The rapper posted in July,
10:25
Speaker 4: and the phrase inspired the title of her song Hot
10:28
Speaker 4: Girl Summer, which released that August. Its legacy can be
10:31
Speaker 4: seen in some of the TikTok girl trends. And then yeah,
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Speaker 4: so this article points to like hot girl, block girl, dinner,
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Speaker 4: all of these different things. Another kind of article talking
10:43
Speaker 4: about this was from Business Insider, in which they said,
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Speaker 4: quote gen Z is reclaiming the word girl after years
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Speaker 4: of reckoning over people using the term to infantilize women.
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Speaker 4: The fact that women are using the term girl represents
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Speaker 4: a cultural reclamation, conscious or not, after years of reckoning
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Speaker 4: over the term and sexist used. Being called a girl,
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Speaker 4: especially in hierarchical settings like a workplace, can be unintentionally
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Speaker 4: patronizing at best and demeaning at worst.
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Speaker 1: And so yeah, like, I totally agree.
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Speaker 4: I think like there obviously is like a very heavy
11:12
Speaker 4: misogynous connotation being called a girl with like things that
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Speaker 4: are associated with girlhood. And I think it is interesting
11:19
Speaker 4: that this kind of has been the response to the
11:21
Speaker 4: fact that like this idea of like the girl boss
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Speaker 4: and girl boss feminism sort of failed and sort of
11:26
Speaker 4: didn't really work out.
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Speaker 1: This is where I think it.
11:39
Speaker 4: Is important to look at what these actual trends are
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Speaker 4: doing and promoting.
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Speaker 1: And Samantha, this is what I'm going to get to
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Speaker 1: your question of what is girl body.
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Speaker 4: Because yeah, it's for one thing obviously, Like if we're
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Speaker 4: rooting this back in like hot Girl Summer, Hot Girl Want,
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Speaker 4: that's one thing. Girl dinner that was sort of the
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Speaker 4: like nexus point of like something that I think started
11:59
Speaker 4: very innocently and started as kind of like a fun
12:02
Speaker 4: thing that took a very dark turn. Go back to
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Speaker 4: that Business Insider article later on. There's a quote that
12:09
Speaker 4: says the past few years of girl based trends, as
12:13
Speaker 4: Kate Lindsay noted in Internet Culture newsletter embedded earlier this week,
12:18
Speaker 4: have shifted. While women were once girl bossing are now
12:21
Speaker 4: talking about rotting in their bedrooms. As Lindsay writes, these
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Speaker 4: types of trends are a counterpoint to the idealized girl
12:27
Speaker 4: aesthetics of the twenty twenties, and in the process they
12:30
Speaker 4: plucked and pulled apart the concept of girlhood through internet memes.
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Speaker 4: Despite some of these trends being pretty mundane, that's actually important.
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Speaker 4: Reducing a girl to a series of increasingly feral behaviors
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Speaker 4: removes some of the terms baggage. So yeah, like what
12:43
Speaker 4: this quote is saying is that like it's sort of
12:46
Speaker 4: rejecting this idea of like girlhood being a not taking
12:50
Speaker 4: it seriously and be kind of rejecting the idea of
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Speaker 4: like the girl boss and the very manicured, very like
12:54
Speaker 4: put together idea of girlhood. But also I think it
12:58
Speaker 4: raises this quote kind of phraises a lot of red
13:01
Speaker 4: flags about this whole kind of girl trend where yes,
13:04
Speaker 4: it is kind of a response to the fact that
13:09
Speaker 4: girl boss feminism.
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Speaker 1: Kind of failed.
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Speaker 4: It ended up sort of promoting this very like unattainable,
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Speaker 4: exhausting idea that was very much rooted in capitalism. So
13:21
Speaker 4: it's promoting the opposite. Girl rotting is the idea that like, yeah,
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Speaker 4: you're gonna come home from work and you're just gonna
13:27
Speaker 4: like lay in bed and watch TV and you're gonna
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Speaker 4: girl rot You're not gonna and it's kind of repackaging
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Speaker 4: it as a way of like, oh, this is just
13:34
Speaker 4: part of girlhood. You're girl rotting, which I don't know.
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Speaker 4: To me, I'm like, maybe that's there's a bigger problem
13:40
Speaker 4: there we need to talk about.
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Speaker 6: Are we talking about depression?
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Speaker 5: Right? This conditional thing that happened, like is that we're
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Speaker 5: calling a girl rotting to make it cute and hopefully like.
13:52
Speaker 1: Let me figure that.
13:53
Speaker 4: And I'm like, that's a symptom of depression or like,
13:57
Speaker 4: maybe that is like a bigger again, if we're talking
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Speaker 4: about all these things being a response to the pact
14:01
Speaker 4: that like girl boss feminism, you know, just sort of
14:06
Speaker 4: ended up perpetuating a lot of these really toxic, hyper
14:09
Speaker 4: capitalist ideas. If girl broading is the opposite of that,
14:13
Speaker 4: you haven't solved the problem. You're still being exhausted by
14:16
Speaker 4: the system. Yeah, so that one was weird. I'm going
14:20
Speaker 4: to pivot to girl math real quick too, because girl
14:22
Speaker 4: math was the other one that I think really started
14:24
Speaker 4: to be like, all right, guys, what are we doing?
14:28
Speaker 4: So from a Washington Post article about girl math, they say, quote,
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Speaker 4: there's no need to have a moral panic about the trend,
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Speaker 4: says Dan Egan, vice president of Behavioral Finance and Investing
14:38
Speaker 4: for Betterment Additional Investment advisory firm. Egan says, what's a
14:43
Speaker 4: place psychology? And it's obvious this has nothing to do
14:46
Speaker 4: with gender kidding aside, girl math represents the type of
14:49
Speaker 4: mental accounting many people do, guys included. It's how we
14:52
Speaker 4: compartmentalize financial decisions. It's also how we just buy overspending
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Speaker 4: end quote. So, yeah, girl math is basically this idea
15:00
Speaker 4: of like there's all these videos being like, oh, if
15:02
Speaker 4: you're paying for something with cash, it's girl math. It
15:04
Speaker 4: doesn't matter if it's like you know, you and your
15:06
Speaker 4: friends going out to dinner and you're just vendowing each
15:10
Speaker 4: other back and forth for like the same cycle of meals.
15:13
Speaker 4: It's not real money because you're like basically just like
15:16
Speaker 4: pay each other back and forth.
15:18
Speaker 1: Which like I get it.
15:18
Speaker 4: And again that quote is saying like this is something
15:20
Speaker 4: that everybody does. It's just psychology is just kind of
15:22
Speaker 4: how we like think about spending. Why are we putting
15:25
Speaker 4: girl in front of it?
15:26
Speaker 1: Though? Like what is the message there?
15:32
Speaker 4: Are we just sort of saying like, oh, it's girl
15:34
Speaker 4: math because girls can't do math. Girls can't like understand
15:37
Speaker 4: finances and like, so later on in that article, they
15:40
Speaker 4: talked to another financial expert, Kia McAllister Young, the director
15:45
Speaker 4: of America Saves, and unlike the first person that they interview,
15:48
Speaker 4: this person's actually a woman, which I don't know, I
15:50
Speaker 4: think that's interesting, but she calls the trend quote amusing
15:55
Speaker 4: and like her only sort of concern is this idea
15:57
Speaker 4: of like, yeah, it's fun, but like, let's make sure
15:59
Speaker 4: this isn't how we're doing all of our budgeting, Like
16:01
Speaker 4: it's important to also budget, but like that's kind of
16:04
Speaker 4: the point is I'm like, yeah, I know, if we're
16:05
Speaker 4: admitting that this isn't a good way of budgeting, this
16:07
Speaker 4: is a this is sort of a fun, silly thing.
16:09
Speaker 4: Why are we so insistent on attaching it to girlhood,
16:13
Speaker 4: on attaching it to this gender binary And then so
16:16
Speaker 4: the sort of the last sort of trend that I
16:18
Speaker 4: want to talk about in these girl whatever trends is
16:23
Speaker 4: and this is the one that I think kind of
16:26
Speaker 4: was a marker to me that this kind of trend
16:28
Speaker 4: is ending and it's sort of starting to reach its downfall.
16:31
Speaker 1: Is this idea of quote like girl hobbies.
16:34
Speaker 6: So there was a.
16:35
Speaker 4: TikTok that went viral, and I'm not going to say
16:37
Speaker 4: the person's user name for this because I have nothing
16:40
Speaker 4: good to say about this TikTok, but basically it was good.
16:44
Speaker 4: It was presenting this idea of like girl hobbies and
16:48
Speaker 4: it was basically saying, oh, if you think you don't
16:50
Speaker 4: have any.
16:51
Speaker 1: Hobbies, no, you just have girl hobbies.
16:53
Speaker 4: And they listed girl hobbies as grabbing a little treat,
16:58
Speaker 4: coffee or pastry, doing our skincare, makeup, hair routines, reorganizing
17:03
Speaker 4: instead of sleeping, hot girl walk, social media, investigative work,
17:07
Speaker 4: shopping in store or online, and so like.
17:12
Speaker 1: This video went viral.
17:15
Speaker 4: And immediately like met a bunch of like a bunch
17:17
Speaker 4: of people did stitches of it, kind of being like whoa, Like, what's.
17:20
Speaker 1: Going on guys?
17:23
Speaker 4: TikTok user Taylor Dade, who uses the at ray lot,
17:28
Speaker 4: posted a response that blew up that I think kind
17:31
Speaker 4: of sum rises it very well. She says, what is
17:34
Speaker 4: going on? What are we saying those are not hobbies?
17:37
Speaker 4: What is going on with this infantalization brain rot trend
17:40
Speaker 4: that has grown women saying no, I don't need hobbies
17:43
Speaker 4: or a personality because I'm a teenage girl and I
17:46
Speaker 4: have to get coffee and a little treat and go shopping.
17:49
Speaker 4: And then she later goes on to say, which I
17:50
Speaker 4: think is another good point. I know everybody who says, hmm,
17:54
Speaker 4: maybe it's kind of heart andful to identify ourselves with
17:56
Speaker 4: extremely sexist stereotypes gets called a pick me.
17:59
Speaker 1: Well, guess what.
18:00
Speaker 4: I love Charlotte Tilbury, Contour wand and Hot Pink Stanley
18:03
Speaker 4: just as much as you guys do. However, I have
18:05
Speaker 4: my own thoughts and opinions and feelings and ambitions and
18:08
Speaker 4: goals and dreams and interests and hobbies and personality outside
18:11
Speaker 4: of consumers bolsh. So yeah, this is wh I think
18:16
Speaker 4: this particular video, the girl hobbies video, and all of
18:20
Speaker 4: the backlash signals to me that.
18:22
Speaker 1: We're kind of like beyond the peak of this.
18:24
Speaker 4: I think people are starting to realize, like it's going
18:26
Speaker 4: a little too far. But also, yeah, let's talk about this,
18:29
Speaker 4: because what are the things that she's calling girl hobbies? Shopping,
18:34
Speaker 4: doing makeup, skincare all of the like we literally just
18:38
Speaker 4: took the like women be shopping and put it in
18:40
Speaker 4: a different pont and like repackage it in a way
18:42
Speaker 4: that so It's kind of like, if the original argument
18:45
Speaker 4: is that we're reclaiming this idea of girlhood and we're
18:51
Speaker 4: taking you know, reclaiming the idea of femininity in girlhood.
18:55
Speaker 1: Is that actually what's happening or are.
18:57
Speaker 4: We just reinforcing these kind of stereotypes and it what like,
19:00
Speaker 4: what is the benefit of also then really really emphasizing
19:06
Speaker 4: this gender binary, this idea that all of this is
19:09
Speaker 4: just this is just part of girlhood. All of these
19:11
Speaker 4: sort of very consumerist, very passive ideas are a part
19:14
Speaker 4: of girlhood.
19:16
Speaker 5: I just want you to know that all these hobbies
19:17
Speaker 5: you listed off was all on our girl talky So oh.
19:21
Speaker 4: Sorry, yeah, I know nineteen eighty right, it was literally
19:27
Speaker 4: lis every single one of those things.
19:30
Speaker 1: Why exactly.
19:30
Speaker 4: That's what I'm saying, though, It's like, what happened guys,
19:33
Speaker 4: like this is the kind of nineteen eighties Like oh yeah,
19:36
Speaker 4: literally it's women be shopping in a different font.
19:39
Speaker 1: What's happening?
19:40
Speaker 5: And also to note all of this makes these are
19:43
Speaker 5: million dollar industries that we're talking.
19:44
Speaker 4: About exactly, which the other part of this is I
19:48
Speaker 4: think it's interesting that this is like, and I've said,
19:50
Speaker 4: I think this is a response to the fact that
19:53
Speaker 4: a lot of people felt that like girl.
19:54
Speaker 1: Boss feminism didn't work.
19:57
Speaker 4: So instead of like becoming becoming the CEO, becoming the
20:01
Speaker 4: you know women, that's really like winning in the in
20:05
Speaker 4: the capitalist financial spirit. Now it's just become about consuming
20:09
Speaker 4: and about consuming the things. And I think this kind
20:14
Speaker 4: of is where it led me to look at this
20:17
Speaker 4: not just as like its own kind of trend of
20:20
Speaker 4: girl dinner, a girl math or hobbies, et cetera, but like,
20:23
Speaker 4: let's also look at the other sort of conversations that
20:26
Speaker 4: are happening around girlhood and around women womanhood and femininity
20:31
Speaker 4: and feminism on TikTok. So this is where we're going
20:35
Speaker 4: to go into the second kind of silo here in
20:40
Speaker 4: my big conspiracy board of all of these different trends
20:43
Speaker 4: that are happening, which is the cycle of fast fashion
20:50
Speaker 4: micro trends that are happening on TikTok. And this idea
20:53
Speaker 4: of like the quote like esthetic, if you're somebody like
20:57
Speaker 4: me who has been very chronically online, you'll know that
21:00
Speaker 4: this word like aesthetic and the idea of having an
21:03
Speaker 4: aesthetic is not like a new thing. And so like
21:06
Speaker 4: when I'm talking about aesthetics, it's not really in an
21:11
Speaker 4: online sense. It's not really like the traditional definition of
21:14
Speaker 4: the word. Usually it is referring to like a personal
21:17
Speaker 4: sense of style that's really tied to fashion and appearance
21:22
Speaker 4: and kind of like you are just like general household decor,
21:25
Speaker 4: room decor kind of stuff. I always really associate it
21:29
Speaker 4: with like kind of twenty fourteen era Tumbler. It was
21:32
Speaker 4: like a big thing to have, like you're very curated aesthetic.
21:36
Speaker 4: So yeah, again, it's not like necessarily a new thing,
21:39
Speaker 4: but I think in a post kind of twenty twenty
21:43
Speaker 4: world where like TikTok has become this like major hub
21:47
Speaker 4: for like culture, the whole idea of having an aesthetic
21:50
Speaker 4: is really like tookn off, and it's moved away from
21:54
Speaker 4: sort of being a personal sense of style to just
21:56
Speaker 4: being a way to describe this sort of series of
21:59
Speaker 4: trends that are happening, and these trends that have also
22:03
Speaker 4: been happening at like an ever kind of quickening pace
22:05
Speaker 4: and have become more and more connected to the fast
22:08
Speaker 4: fashion industry. So yeah, if you've been on TikTok, you know,
22:11
Speaker 4: the most recent kind of iteration of this has been
22:14
Speaker 4: the mob wife trend, which was its own sort of chaos.
22:20
Speaker 4: That was really funny. I am Italian American. I thought
22:23
Speaker 4: all of the drama around that was really funny. But yeah,
22:28
Speaker 4: so we have the mob bofe trend. Some previous kind
22:30
Speaker 4: of esthetic trends that have happened have been the clean girl,
22:35
Speaker 4: old money, coastal grandma, rock star girlfriend, et cetera, et cetera,
22:40
Speaker 4: et cetera, and the personal bane of my existence. I
22:43
Speaker 4: could do a whole episode about this, but the cocatte trend, I.
22:47
Speaker 6: Know none of these right now, everybody was.
22:53
Speaker 4: Freaking out, this is what I think, like, this is
22:57
Speaker 4: it's this And then it's the same thing with girl hobbies,
23:00
Speaker 4: where there's one thing that kind of sets it off
23:02
Speaker 4: and as everybody being like, what's going on?
23:04
Speaker 1: What are we doing?
23:05
Speaker 4: So yeah, a lot of the time, not all the time,
23:07
Speaker 4: but usually these kind of aesthetics are tied to like
23:11
Speaker 4: kind of a callback to an earlier subculture, but instead
23:15
Speaker 4: of really being rooted in that subculture, being rooted in
23:19
Speaker 4: like the cultural aspect of it, it's much more focused
23:23
Speaker 4: on like consumable goods like fashion and you know, yeah,
23:27
Speaker 4: just like household decor kind of stuff.
23:31
Speaker 1: But yeah, really, really emphasizing fashion.
23:34
Speaker 4: And we've also seen in a like post kind of lockdown,
23:38
Speaker 4: post twenty twenty world, the like takeoff of the fast
23:44
Speaker 4: fashion industry and which you know had been a thing
23:48
Speaker 4: for a while, but it really really kind of reached
23:50
Speaker 4: some new heights in like in the sort of post
23:53
Speaker 4: twenty twenty world, we've seen these brands like Shean really
23:57
Speaker 4: take off. And this has been like perfect sort of
24:03
Speaker 4: like it's been this perfect storm of for these trends
24:06
Speaker 4: to happen, and for these trends to happen it like
24:09
Speaker 4: a faster and faster pace. So what has happened is
24:14
Speaker 4: having an aesthetic has kind of moved away from being
24:16
Speaker 4: a personal sense of style and it has instead become
24:19
Speaker 4: keeping up with the latest trend, keeping up with the
24:21
Speaker 4: latest sort of hyper specific micro trend, the clean girl,
24:27
Speaker 4: the rock star girlfriend, the mob wife, the whatever.
24:30
Speaker 1: Yeah, and Coquette, which is yeah, I have a lot
24:35
Speaker 1: of things to say about Coquette.
24:38
Speaker 3: Yeah.
24:38
Speaker 4: And so this is where I think there's two concerning
24:42
Speaker 4: things here. One is that yes, this is very tied
24:44
Speaker 4: to fast fashion, and it is very tied to these
24:47
Speaker 4: corporations that are relying on sweatshop labor that are relying
24:51
Speaker 4: on all these sort of very terrible practices, both on
24:56
Speaker 4: a humanitarian level and on an environmental level. And also
25:02
Speaker 4: we need to look at what is actually being kind
25:04
Speaker 4: of like promoted at least trends, because well, again, yes,
25:09
Speaker 4: it is fun to have like a fun little aesthetic
25:12
Speaker 4: that you know, it doesn't necessarily have to have any
25:14
Speaker 4: meaning to it. There are some sort of connecting threads
25:18
Speaker 4: through all of this that I think are a little
25:20
Speaker 4: bit concerning.
25:22
Speaker 1: So like mob wife, rock star girlfriend.
25:25
Speaker 4: These were two that really stuck out to me because
25:27
Speaker 4: I was like, why it's so weird that they're emphasizing
25:29
Speaker 4: the like girlfriend, you're not the thing, but you're the
25:32
Speaker 4: girlfriend of the rock star, you're the mob wife. Coquette, Like,
25:37
Speaker 4: let's be real, it is the coquette trend is rooted
25:41
Speaker 4: in a like kind of cult around youth and in
25:45
Speaker 4: a lot of these very like pedophilic ideas about beauty.
25:49
Speaker 4: In women's beauty, it is like rooted in like the
25:53
Speaker 4: kind of Lolita trends. And again that's to say, like
25:56
Speaker 4: you can enjoy this sort of stuff in this sort
25:58
Speaker 4: of fashion and not have it not be that serious.
26:02
Speaker 4: But this becoming as popular as it is and being
26:06
Speaker 4: something that is very much rooted in a lot of
26:07
Speaker 4: like very misogynistic ideas about beauty. That gets a little
26:16
Speaker 4: bit concerning. And then sort of we're seeing some other
26:18
Speaker 4: micro trends that I think are interesting. I don't understand
26:22
Speaker 4: what these are still, but there was like the tomato
26:24
Speaker 4: girl and the pickle girl and whatever, and something that
26:27
Speaker 4: I was seeing happen over and over againness all of
26:29
Speaker 4: these are they're very much rooted in like girl, clean girl,
26:34
Speaker 4: mob wife girlfriend, all of these things. They're very much
26:37
Speaker 4: rooted in this like gender binary, and a lot of
26:41
Speaker 4: times they are like expressions of hyperfemininity.
26:44
Speaker 3: You know.
26:45
Speaker 4: Coquette is like really leaning into hyperfemininity. Even the mob
26:50
Speaker 4: wife trend like leans very much into hyperfemininity.
26:55
Speaker 1: So I think it's just it's interesting too.
26:57
Speaker 4: And one of those articles that I was talking about
27:00
Speaker 4: originally that we're talking about girl math and girl hobbies
27:02
Speaker 4: and all this, we're talking about how it's a rejection
27:04
Speaker 4: of these kind of constant trends, but at the same time,
27:08
Speaker 4: these sort of trends are also rooting themselves in this
27:10
Speaker 4: idea of girlhood and femininity and this is what it
27:14
Speaker 4: is to be a woman.
27:15
Speaker 1: This is what it is to be a girl.
27:27
Speaker 4: So this is where I'm going to jump in and
27:28
Speaker 4: like just acknowledge the fact that so like I personally.
27:33
Speaker 1: Don't identify as a woman.
27:35
Speaker 4: I identify as like non binary and gender queer and uh,
27:40
Speaker 4: trans masculine. But that being said, I think like that
27:43
Speaker 4: is kind of the thing that makes this really stand
27:45
Speaker 4: out to me, because all of these trends are so
27:50
Speaker 4: so rooted in the gender binary and in emphasizing the
27:53
Speaker 4: gender binary, and I think, especially at a time where
27:56
Speaker 4: there have been so many violent fs to reinforce that
28:02
Speaker 4: gender binary, I think we need to be really critical
28:04
Speaker 4: about how we are actually talking about those ideas and
28:07
Speaker 4: talking about something as you know, supposedly silly is just
28:13
Speaker 4: like your whatever personal sense of style, a fashion trend,
28:18
Speaker 4: but how are we talking about that in terms of
28:20
Speaker 4: like the gender binary, And so to really look at that,
28:24
Speaker 4: let's talk real quick about like the extreme version of
28:28
Speaker 4: this gender binary, which is the trad wife. And you
28:32
Speaker 4: guys just did a really awesome episode with bridget about
28:35
Speaker 4: tradwife and trodwife culture that I would definitely recommend checking out.
28:40
Speaker 1: I'm not going to go.
28:41
Speaker 4: Super into this idea because I think, like I'm definitely
28:44
Speaker 4: preaching a little bit to the choir here about like
28:46
Speaker 4: why the whole idea of the trodwife and the trodwife
28:49
Speaker 4: image is harmful. I think we need to look at
28:52
Speaker 4: why we're seeing this trend now and what it's claiming
28:55
Speaker 4: to be in a response to, versus like what it
28:57
Speaker 4: actually kind of is a response to, because honestly, I
29:00
Speaker 4: think this whole like tradwife ideal and image is rotten
29:03
Speaker 4: in a lot of the same anxieties that these other
29:05
Speaker 4: trends are also rooted in, because the tradwife phenomena is
29:11
Speaker 4: kind of posing it. What it does is it poses
29:13
Speaker 4: itself as in opposition in response to girl boss feminism, right,
29:20
Speaker 4: It is this idea that women we have somehow been
29:24
Speaker 4: duped by feminism into going into the workforce, and really
29:28
Speaker 4: what is empowering is to go back into the homes
29:30
Speaker 4: and you know, get married and hoop out a bunch
29:33
Speaker 4: of kids and provide for those kids and whatever like
29:37
Speaker 4: all of that. And I think if you look at again,
29:41
Speaker 4: the whole idea of like girl rotting, girl math, girl hobbies,
29:47
Speaker 4: all of that is also a response to the fact
29:49
Speaker 4: that a lot of women did not feel fulfilled by
29:53
Speaker 4: girl boss feminism. So TikTok user Caitlin, it's c ai
30:00
Speaker 4: il Yn with like a period in between each letter.
30:03
Speaker 4: I'll link the original video in the notes. But she
30:07
Speaker 4: made a really great video I think breaking this down
30:09
Speaker 4: and connecting a lot of these things that I'm talking
30:11
Speaker 4: about and talking about it in the context of the
30:15
Speaker 4: child wife movement. So in a video called Coquette Capitalism,
30:18
Speaker 4: which I will link in the notes, she starts by
30:21
Speaker 4: quoting a tweet from fashion and culture writer Ryan Finn
30:25
Speaker 4: that states bows and ribbons are symbolic of twenty twenty
30:28
Speaker 4: three being the year of the girl plus useless thing,
30:30
Speaker 4: when it should have been the year of the girl feminism. Instead,
30:34
Speaker 4: we've had the Barbie film rebranding girl boss culture through
30:36
Speaker 4: uplifting successful billionaire capitalist women girl math being used to
30:41
Speaker 4: advertise at the same time the reproductive rights are being stripped,
30:44
Speaker 4: the gender wage gap is awful, and we lack a
30:47
Speaker 4: globally interconnected feminist movement and the bows and ribbons that
30:53
Speaker 4: sort of trend is related to the coquette trend, just
30:56
Speaker 4: her context, and.
30:58
Speaker 1: This is why I'm critical of that argument.
31:00
Speaker 4: Like girl Dinner and girl Math and girl whatever, it's
31:02
Speaker 4: somehow like reclaiming this idea of girlhood and femininity which
31:06
Speaker 4: had previously not been taken seriously by the patriarchy, because
31:11
Speaker 4: we need to look at what is actually being claimed
31:13
Speaker 4: as part of girlhood. Caitlin then goes on to talk
31:15
Speaker 4: about how, in addition to the popularity of like the
31:19
Speaker 4: coquette trend and this return to more like girlish esthetics,
31:23
Speaker 4: very traditional feminine aesthetics, which was all these aesthetic trends
31:27
Speaker 4: I was talking about. Quote, twenty twenty three was also
31:30
Speaker 4: the year of girl math, and girl math was juxtaposed
31:33
Speaker 4: against the male Roman Empire, where in pretty overt ways,
31:36
Speaker 4: we're saying through pop culture and memes that girls can't
31:39
Speaker 4: do math, or girls have their own special kind of
31:41
Speaker 4: math called girl math. Meanwhile boys or men are constantly
31:45
Speaker 4: thinking about history.
31:46
Speaker 1: They're thinking about the Roman Empire.
31:48
Speaker 4: She then says, quote this happening in the same year
31:52
Speaker 4: as the rise of the state home girlfriend, the soft life,
31:55
Speaker 4: and the Sprinkle Sprinkle, which all of that I'm kind
31:58
Speaker 4: of putting under the like trodwife umbrella, because I think
32:01
Speaker 4: the state at home girlfriend is sort of the like
32:03
Speaker 4: more secular, slightly less crysto fascist.
32:06
Speaker 1: Version of the trod wife. But yeah quote.
32:09
Speaker 4: The implicit argument behind all of these being that contemporary
32:11
Speaker 4: feminism has failed to provide women with material well being.
32:15
Speaker 4: The real way to undermine the patriarchy, or to make
32:17
Speaker 4: the patriarchy work for you, is to get a rich
32:19
Speaker 4: man to pund your lifestyle and never have to work again.
32:22
Speaker 4: So we're seeing in real time the infantilization of women
32:25
Speaker 4: through pop culture and memes. The image of the girl
32:27
Speaker 4: boss or girl power of five to ten years ago
32:30
Speaker 4: in the early to mid two thousand times is dead,
32:32
Speaker 4: particularly as many of these women owned millennial core companies
32:35
Speaker 4: like Nasty Gal and Glossier experience their corporate downfall and
32:39
Speaker 4: honestly like, yeah, I agree, I think that she's onto
32:42
Speaker 4: something there. So she then goes on to say we've
32:45
Speaker 4: ended up with bimbo feminism and girl math not because
32:47
Speaker 4: women believe that they themselves are stupid, but because they're
32:50
Speaker 4: tired and because the promise of girl boss feminism that
32:53
Speaker 4: we've seen for the last several decades didn't deliver. The
32:56
Speaker 4: reason that girl boss feminism wasn't successful in challenging the
32:59
Speaker 4: patriarchy was because it was not anti capitalist and Instead,
33:03
Speaker 4: it viewed capitalism as an avenue through which women could
33:06
Speaker 4: find liberation. For the vast majority of women who belong
33:09
Speaker 4: to the working class and have to continue to go
33:11
Speaker 4: to work in order to pay their bills and survive
33:13
Speaker 4: in capitalist society, girl boss feminism did not think for
33:16
Speaker 4: them except maybe replace their boss or their CEO with
33:19
Speaker 4: a woman in a hand suit. The material conditions of
33:21
Speaker 4: the vast majority of women didn't change as a result
33:23
Speaker 4: of girl boss feminism, and after several years of significant
33:26
Speaker 4: material challenges, including the pandemic and shrinkulation, it's no wonder
33:30
Speaker 4: why people might want to retreat back into I'm baby
33:33
Speaker 4: and I just want to be taken care of. Unfortunately,
33:35
Speaker 4: this is just a band aid or a short term
33:38
Speaker 4: coping mechanism two larger structural problems of capitalism and patriarchy
33:43
Speaker 4: end quote so.
33:44
Speaker 1: To summon up.
33:45
Speaker 4: I think it's not a coincidence that we're saying the
33:47
Speaker 4: tradwife stayed home, girlfriend, girl, insert word trend, and like
33:53
Speaker 4: highly binary fashion trends all happening on TikTok right now.
33:57
Speaker 4: I think this is all kind of a respect to
34:00
Speaker 4: this crisis of femininity and the fact that like the
34:06
Speaker 4: world is a very very scary place right now. Like
34:08
Speaker 4: one of the things that she said in that is
34:10
Speaker 4: that I get it. It is like there's a lot
34:13
Speaker 4: of really weird mess of stuff happening. We are entering
34:18
Speaker 4: an election year. There are so many, so many scary
34:21
Speaker 4: possibilities and realities that are happening, particularly for women and
34:27
Speaker 4: for non men, and so it makes sense to want
34:33
Speaker 4: to seek that comfort, to want to go back into
34:35
Speaker 4: this idea of like self and fantilizing I'm.
34:40
Speaker 1: Just a girl. I'm not gonna you know, I'm.
34:43
Speaker 4: The whole I'm just a twenty four year old teenage
34:46
Speaker 4: girl thing. I think, especially for a lot of us
34:49
Speaker 4: that are at like, you know, I'm in my mid
34:51
Speaker 4: twenties right now. The pandemic happened at a time when
34:55
Speaker 4: I would have been reaching a lot of those like milestones,
34:58
Speaker 4: and I that's of experience is.
35:00
Speaker 1: Sort of disrupted for me.
35:01
Speaker 4: I think a lot of people are feeling sort of lost,
35:03
Speaker 4: and I think all of these things are responses to
35:07
Speaker 4: that feeling of being lost. And it's understandable, but again,
35:12
Speaker 4: it is not a solution. It is a band aid.
35:17
Speaker 4: I think the importance of talking about this right now
35:19
Speaker 4: is that if we lean too hard on all these ideas.
35:23
Speaker 1: If we lean too hard of this idea of girlhood.
35:26
Speaker 4: Being silly and light and this very like consumerist idea
35:35
Speaker 4: of girlhood, it's just going to end up. We're just
35:39
Speaker 4: going to end up the same place that we were
35:40
Speaker 4: in like twenty seventeen, twenty eighteen, where people were starting
35:43
Speaker 4: to realize that, like the girl Boss, feminism also didn't work.
35:46
Speaker 4: So yeah, I think again, there's two main concerns here.
35:50
Speaker 4: One is this sort of leaning into consumerism as a
35:54
Speaker 4: form of.
35:57
Speaker 1: Liberation or self actualization.
36:01
Speaker 4: The second is this really really strong emphasis on the
36:04
Speaker 4: gender binary and on everything being very very gendered, whether
36:08
Speaker 4: that's something like you know, food which is what we
36:11
Speaker 4: need to survive, to hobbies and fashion and all of that,
36:16
Speaker 4: all of that happening at a time when there is
36:19
Speaker 4: efforts to criminalize any sort of deviance from the gender binary.
36:26
Speaker 1: So yeah, all of that is.
36:27
Speaker 4: To say, these are all very There's a lot of
36:30
Speaker 4: weird stuff happening. There's a lot of weird stuff happening
36:32
Speaker 4: on TikTok. I don't know what the solution is.
36:36
Speaker 1: I think.
36:38
Speaker 4: Again, I understand why this moment is happening. I understand
36:42
Speaker 4: what these things are responding to. But I also think
36:45
Speaker 4: it is indicative of the fact that something is like
36:50
Speaker 4: very wrong right now and people are just kind of
36:54
Speaker 4: scrambling for solutions. And yeah, that's where we're at.
37:00
Speaker 5: There's a there's a lot of obviously, like I'm sitting
37:04
Speaker 5: here trying to remember any of these trends. I'm like,
37:06
Speaker 5: I don't I'm on TikTok and i don't know these
37:08
Speaker 5: three things. And I'm so sad that I'm not caught
37:10
Speaker 5: up with the world slash the kids, you kids.
37:13
Speaker 1: You know what.
37:14
Speaker 4: I don't even like I can I call my I
37:17
Speaker 4: don't know if I can still call myself a kid,
37:20
Speaker 4: But I'm not a kid of that.
37:24
Speaker 6: I'm saying this in this ideal of like I old, it's.
37:29
Speaker 4: Well, that's part of it is that all of this
37:30
Speaker 4: stuff is moving very fast, and I think that is
37:32
Speaker 4: definitely an element of it. All of these these trends
37:35
Speaker 4: are moving very fast. These ideas are moving fast, These
37:38
Speaker 4: images of these idealized images of womanhood or of girlhood
37:41
Speaker 4: are moving very fast. And you know, like you said before,
37:46
Speaker 4: that is very convenient for a lot of these companies
37:49
Speaker 4: that are making this clothing or this whatever, or these
37:53
Speaker 4: candles for girl therapy or whatever.
37:57
Speaker 3: You know.
37:57
Speaker 4: And again, this is why I keep going back to
38:02
Speaker 4: capitalism and what happens when we look at capitalism as
38:08
Speaker 4: a route for as a route for liberation, because we
38:12
Speaker 4: tried that with the Girl Boss feminism and it didn't work.
38:15
Speaker 4: And now we're trying a different route, which is through
38:18
Speaker 4: consumption and through consumerism, and that also is something that
38:21
Speaker 4: I think is going to I think we're already seeing
38:25
Speaker 4: it start to kind of fall apart, and I think
38:28
Speaker 4: it could lead us in a very dangerous direction. And also,
38:32
Speaker 4: capitalism is always going to be have an interest in
38:35
Speaker 4: upholding the gender binary, you know, like it is easier
38:38
Speaker 4: to sell things to people if they are very highly gendered.
38:40
Speaker 4: It's easier to advertise things that are this is about girlhood,
38:43
Speaker 4: this is about whatever.
38:45
Speaker 1: So there definitely.
38:47
Speaker 4: Needs to be some more sort of critical thinking, I think,
38:49
Speaker 4: around gendering all of these ideas so so explicitly.
38:53
Speaker 5: Well, it's also just a reminder that capitalism and marketing
38:56
Speaker 5: know how to take advantage of something, and so they
39:00
Speaker 5: are going to make money whichever way possible. But I
39:02
Speaker 5: think it's also important to remember that things like Girl Boss,
39:05
Speaker 5: which seemed cute and empowering at the beginning. Really, when
39:10
Speaker 5: it did benefit women, it was white heterosexual women kind
39:14
Speaker 5: of some conversations about what happened on Facebook and having
39:16
Speaker 5: big books readen about motivating women to be leaders. It
39:20
Speaker 5: was aimed and targeted towards one specific type of woman,
39:23
Speaker 5: which also is that same conversation of like when women
39:27
Speaker 5: talk about why can't we go back to the days
39:29
Speaker 5: where we didn't have to wor feminism failed us, when
39:31
Speaker 5: in actuality, yes, white feminism failed you, because if we
39:35
Speaker 5: had actually looked at the black community and the people
39:38
Speaker 5: of color during the big waves of feminism in the seventies,
39:42
Speaker 5: we would have a different conversation about choice rather than
39:45
Speaker 5: about work and not being what they would say, housewife
39:48
Speaker 5: and all that. And there's that conversation who was left
39:50
Speaker 5: out and who was not being seen? And that's in
39:52
Speaker 5: the same conversation too, because when we talk about cute
39:55
Speaker 5: girly things, it's typically white women that I see or
39:58
Speaker 5: white girls, and it's a cute idea for a minute.
40:01
Speaker 5: Then you start thinking about the repercussions of because people
40:05
Speaker 5: see this as cute and just a fun trend, you
40:09
Speaker 5: don't see the underlying thing of like, oh, eventually this
40:12
Speaker 5: will be used against whomever in this ideal of Okay,
40:17
Speaker 5: we can fix ourselves. We become more like these people
40:20
Speaker 5: and doing these girl and dinner, which every time you
40:23
Speaker 5: say that, that ring, that that jingle is in my head.
40:26
Speaker 1: I can't get rid of it.
40:27
Speaker 5: Yeah yeah, yeah, constantly every time, and that forever will
40:31
Speaker 5: be in my head. But like who who it is
40:34
Speaker 5: benefiting and what the ideal type or like lifestyle is,
40:39
Speaker 5: and it's usually trended after again sis, upper middle class
40:43
Speaker 5: white women. And that's that conversation of like, yeah, this
40:46
Speaker 5: doesn't seem bad. But then when you really look at
40:49
Speaker 5: who is being normalized and who is being upheld as
40:52
Speaker 5: this is the status quo, it's very dangerous.
40:55
Speaker 4: As you were saying, Yeah, and like what I said
40:57
Speaker 4: at the top two been talking about girl Dinner.
41:00
Speaker 1: I think it is something that started totally innocently.
41:03
Speaker 4: I think it honestly, like I understand the arguments for
41:07
Speaker 4: why people enjoyed it. But once you put a trend
41:10
Speaker 4: out there into the world, like you lose control of it.
41:13
Speaker 4: I think like the last kind of big example of
41:16
Speaker 4: this was the whole like bimbo trend in bimbo feminism
41:20
Speaker 4: on TikTok, and like that is something that when it.
41:23
Speaker 1: Started, like I was like, oh my god, I love this.
41:25
Speaker 1: This is so fun. I think a lot of the
41:27
Speaker 1: early kind of creators around that.
41:30
Speaker 4: Were doing some really fun content, but it was something
41:34
Speaker 4: that you know, a was co opted by these corporations
41:40
Speaker 4: that were like, oh, look, another opportunity to sell a
41:43
Speaker 4: certain type of clothing or whatever.
41:47
Speaker 1: Two people sell a lifestyle to people.
41:51
Speaker 4: And then also if it's an idea that is rooted
41:54
Speaker 4: in very misogynistic stereotypes, like the idea of like the
41:57
Speaker 4: bimbo reclaim, something can turn into just reinforcing those stereotypes
42:03
Speaker 4: real quick. And I think we're seeing that now with
42:06
Speaker 4: all these girl trends.
42:07
Speaker 5: Right And also with that, we should be holding social
42:10
Speaker 5: media responsible as well, because we see who is trending
42:14
Speaker 5: and that makes a difference of why these trends are successful.
42:18
Speaker 5: And again, it's also kind of like the whole fact
42:21
Speaker 5: that a lot of black creators will talk about the
42:22
Speaker 5: fact that their stuff is suppressed while qts white girls
42:27
Speaker 5: and I love I love you my SOLSI please don't
42:29
Speaker 5: think I'm being mean, but it like statistically as it's
42:32
Speaker 5: shown that the QT white girls are probably going to
42:35
Speaker 5: be at the forefront of trending, not just white girls,
42:39
Speaker 5: but white people in general.
42:40
Speaker 6: So just spreading that out.
42:42
Speaker 5: But like, that's that conversation is like, are we also
42:44
Speaker 5: talking about what social media is allowing to be the
42:49
Speaker 5: top of the trend and why it is the top
42:51
Speaker 5: of the trend and who is being suppressed in these
42:53
Speaker 5: conversations as well, because you know, there's a lot to
42:58
Speaker 5: the algorithm, but also algorithm that is created or manipulated
43:05
Speaker 5: by these companies, you know, Instagram and Facebook. Husband repeatedly
43:10
Speaker 5: called out for that, and TikTok is slowly getting repeatedly
43:13
Speaker 5: called out for that. But it's a it's a conversation
43:15
Speaker 5: in this as well, because yes, that girl had no
43:18
Speaker 5: intention I'm sure of like making this. She's like, why
43:21
Speaker 5: a y'all talking about me? I just wanted to eat
43:23
Speaker 5: cheese and bread and I feel you. I feel you.
43:26
Speaker 5: That's all I want to do is eat bread. But like,
43:29
Speaker 5: in the end, who is being raised on these platforms
43:34
Speaker 5: or who are being more noted or being seen up
43:37
Speaker 5: more often? And in that conversation as well, but also
43:40
Speaker 5: I still need you to explain to me what Coquette
43:42
Speaker 5: is I'm still lost.
43:44
Speaker 1: Oh this is yeah, I probably shouldn't have included.
43:50
Speaker 4: A little thing about that, so confused, I might come
43:55
Speaker 4: on here into a whole episode about all of my
43:57
Speaker 4: various issues with cocatte. Coqutte is one of those things
44:00
Speaker 4: where again I think when we talk about is you know,
44:05
Speaker 4: criticizing a sort of cultural thing, if this is a
44:09
Speaker 4: you know, type of fashion or style that you are
44:12
Speaker 4: interested in, if something that you like, totally understand that.
44:17
Speaker 4: But at the same time, I think we really need
44:20
Speaker 4: to examine, like what a lot of it is rooted.
44:22
Speaker 1: In Coquette is Basically.
44:26
Speaker 4: This is the other problem because the thing that happens
44:28
Speaker 4: on TikTok with a lot of these trends is they
44:29
Speaker 4: start off as one thing and then they just become
44:31
Speaker 4: like much broader and like I think coquette is definitely
44:35
Speaker 4: Like I saw something the other day that was like
44:37
Speaker 4: a bunch of very like runge style clothing that somebody
44:40
Speaker 4: called coquette, and that is not coquette at all.
44:43
Speaker 1: But coquette is basically it is it's it's rooted in like.
44:49
Speaker 4: Stuff that is I hang on, I'm trying to find
44:52
Speaker 4: like a good definition of it because I'm looking at
44:55
Speaker 4: like the pictures. Yeah, it's all very it's like pink
44:58
Speaker 4: and a lot of bows, and it's rooted in this
45:00
Speaker 4: idea of like girlhood and childhood.
45:05
Speaker 5: So it's just like a pastel version of the Lolita, right.
45:10
Speaker 4: It's it's it's okay, it's a it's yeah, that's good
45:13
Speaker 4: way I put it.
45:13
Speaker 1: Get it's like pasta Lolita fashion. It is.
45:16
Speaker 4: The whole kind of trend is very connected to like
45:18
Speaker 4: the Lolita trend, which again that's where I get into
45:21
Speaker 4: I think, I think it is important to examine how
45:25
Speaker 4: some of this is kind of rooted in these very
45:28
Speaker 4: like these cults of youth and particularly around like young
45:32
Speaker 4: girls in girlhood and how that is sexualized. It became
45:38
Speaker 4: very pop Yeah, at the end of twenty twenty three,
45:42
Speaker 4: this became like very very popular on TikTok. If you
45:45
Speaker 4: guys saw there are a lot of like videos of
45:46
Speaker 4: people putting bows on like everyday objects and being like
45:52
Speaker 4: my favorite one was somebody who took like a pair
45:53
Speaker 4: of like weights and like put a bow on them
45:55
Speaker 4: and was like their cocatte now. Like but again, like
46:00
Speaker 4: with that, it's fun and it's silly, but also anytime
46:06
Speaker 4: we're using a trend that is or a idea that
46:09
Speaker 4: is like rooted in a lot of complex, mildly problematic,
46:17
Speaker 4: you know, to extremely problematic ideas, and it just opens
46:24
Speaker 4: the door for a lot of stuff to happen.
46:26
Speaker 5: Yeah, I got to I yes, and I see that
46:28
Speaker 5: it is aligned with that conversation about soft.
46:31
Speaker 4: Girl, Yeah, which I think also I read what you
46:34
Speaker 4: said about like all of these trends also being like
46:36
Speaker 4: you know, when you look at them up on TikTok,
46:38
Speaker 4: when you see the stuff that's trending on TikTok, a
46:40
Speaker 4: lot of the times it's white women. A lot of
46:42
Speaker 4: the times it is like conventionally attractive cis white women. Yeah,
46:45
Speaker 4: that's also part of the conversation, and that is also
46:48
Speaker 4: part of like the idea of you know, if this
46:51
Speaker 4: is the image of girlhood that we're creating, and this
46:53
Speaker 4: is the image of womanhood that we're creating, it's very white,
46:56
Speaker 4: it's very it's very much rooted and traditional ideas about beauty,
47:03
Speaker 4: and uh, yeah, it is. It's it's definitely it's rooted
47:08
Speaker 4: in whiteness, it's rooted in heteropatriarchy, it's rooted in TRANSASOCNE. Yeah,
47:12
Speaker 4: and that again is an issue of like the apps
47:15
Speaker 4: more than I think it is these individual creators.
47:27
Speaker 1: One thing that I did think was interesting that I
47:29
Speaker 1: did not realize this.
47:29
Speaker 4: So the original girl Dinner, the person that did the
47:32
Speaker 4: video that was like girl dinner or medieval peasant food
47:37
Speaker 4: or whatever, which I didn't even realize that was how
47:39
Speaker 4: it started, that was made by a white woman. The
47:42
Speaker 4: woman that did the one with the little song with
47:44
Speaker 4: the like girl dinner, that was actually a black woman
47:46
Speaker 4: that did it, that made the original video. Which but
47:50
Speaker 4: again I think about this conversation was interesting because I
47:53
Speaker 4: had not seen that original video until I like went
47:55
Speaker 4: and looked it up and was like, who is the
47:57
Speaker 4: first person to.
47:58
Speaker 1: Like make that sound?
48:00
Speaker 4: So I don't know, maybe there's there's definitely something there too, but.
48:05
Speaker 5: Yeah, maybe the original I saw was also a white girl.
48:08
Speaker 5: And then that's who got a credited who got credited
48:10
Speaker 5: with it?
48:11
Speaker 4: For what I've said, That's what I'm saying is that
48:12
Speaker 4: she got the credit for it, which she did, you know,
48:15
Speaker 4: make the original video using term girl dinner. But yeah,
48:19
Speaker 4: like I that I it took me much longer to
48:22
Speaker 4: find out who made the song.
48:24
Speaker 1: Yeah, the jingle. The jingle, the jingle is a jingle.
48:28
Speaker 6: In my head because and also now I want meat, and.
48:33
Speaker 1: Geez, you can make that happen. I think you can
48:37
Speaker 1: make that happen.
48:38
Speaker 6: I'm gonna have to go to a grocery store.
48:42
Speaker 1: Well, I do think there's a lot more we could
48:46
Speaker 1: talk about.
48:46
Speaker 2: There's a lot of I've been thinking about this a
48:49
Speaker 2: lot too, about the nick Well, I'm not on TikTok,
48:52
Speaker 2: so this was all new to me.
48:54
Speaker 1: But I've been thinking a lot about the idea.
48:56
Speaker 2: Of cause the first episode I ever did it was
49:00
Speaker 2: bad feminism, and it was about like if you're not
49:03
Speaker 2: a perfect feminist and you're not a feminist. But now
49:05
Speaker 2: I feel like we've gone in the other way, which
49:07
Speaker 2: is like you.
49:08
Speaker 1: Don't have to do anything to be a feminist.
49:10
Speaker 4: You well, it's it's the other extreme.
49:13
Speaker 1: It's the other extreme.
49:14
Speaker 4: You could be a you could again spend your day
49:18
Speaker 4: grow rotting in bed, and that's feminism.
49:22
Speaker 1: Yeah.
49:24
Speaker 2: The thing is, like I get it in terms of
49:27
Speaker 2: let's be honest about what is killing us with this
49:32
Speaker 2: trying to succeed, But at the same time, like if
49:34
Speaker 2: you're just like eh, doing this, that's not the same thing.
49:39
Speaker 4: Right, There needs to be a middle ground, I think
49:41
Speaker 4: is the it's the big thing here, like right, like.
49:45
Speaker 2: You can you can say like I'm not the perfect feminist,
49:47
Speaker 2: but that doesn't mean you can be like, oh, well
49:49
Speaker 2: I'm not the perfect feminist like that. There's a difference
49:53
Speaker 2: between that. So I would love for you to come
49:56
Speaker 2: back and I could tell.
49:57
Speaker 4: You, yeah, something that I've interesting too, Just to add
50:01
Speaker 4: one more quick thing in there. So and I brought
50:03
Speaker 4: up this term and talking about one of the TikTok's earlier,
50:07
Speaker 4: but the idea of like any sort of criticism of
50:09
Speaker 4: these trends, you're labeled to pick me. And I think
50:13
Speaker 4: so the podcast Rehashed did a really good episode about
50:15
Speaker 4: the idea of a pick me and kind of how
50:18
Speaker 4: that term has evolved.
50:19
Speaker 1: But I think.
50:22
Speaker 4: The whole idea of what a pick me is has
50:24
Speaker 4: also like kind of derailed on TikTok and on social media,
50:27
Speaker 4: and it has become like any sort of rejection of
50:31
Speaker 4: hyperfemininity gets you labeled as a pick me, like saying
50:36
Speaker 4: like it even got so far as to people, you know,
50:38
Speaker 4: when the whole like Barbie Heimer thing was happening, it
50:41
Speaker 4: was like, oh if you're like not excited to go
50:44
Speaker 4: see the Barbie movie or like a pick me, And.
50:45
Speaker 1: It's like, I don't know, Like people just have different
50:48
Speaker 1: tastes in movies.
50:49
Speaker 4: Sometimes that doesn't really seem like a reason to be Yeah,
50:54
Speaker 4: or like women that don't want to wear makeup, I'm
50:57
Speaker 4: I don't. Again, I don't I find as a woman either,
51:00
Speaker 4: Like I don't really wear makeup. That's not because I
51:02
Speaker 4: think there's something inherently wrong with wanting to wear makeup.
51:05
Speaker 4: That's a personal choice. That does not make me a
51:07
Speaker 4: pick me because that is not something that like I
51:11
Speaker 4: want to do. But yeah, there's and I think that
51:13
Speaker 4: that is interesting in when we're talking about these sort
51:16
Speaker 4: of returning to these very very extreme binary ideas of
51:22
Speaker 4: what womanhood is, any sort of rejection of that femininity
51:26
Speaker 4: gets you labeled to pick me, which I think is
51:28
Speaker 4: interesting and concerning. Yeah, there's many many things here that
51:39
Speaker 4: I will probably pig back on to talk about.
51:45
Speaker 6: Yeah, Yeah, we might need you to back on just
51:48
Speaker 6: to explain trends to us.
51:49
Speaker 1: To be honest, honestly, that'd be great because.
51:52
Speaker 6: That might be I'm like, I'm going to send you
51:55
Speaker 6: these things, explain these to me.
51:58
Speaker 1: I'm so down.
51:58
Speaker 4: I don't I barely understand half of these. By if
52:03
Speaker 4: somebody is seriously like, what is going on with the
52:05
Speaker 4: whole like pickle girl tomato girl thing, if.
52:08
Speaker 1: Somebody wants to explain to me what that means. I
52:10
Speaker 1: have a theory about tomato girl. Tomato.
52:13
Speaker 6: They just not like pickles with tomatoes.
52:15
Speaker 1: No, no, no, it's pro pickles and tomatoes. Okay.
52:19
Speaker 5: The tomato girl has something to do with the girl
52:22
Speaker 5: that came on saying that tomatoes make you fat and
52:25
Speaker 5: then everybody got mad at her.
52:26
Speaker 6: Oh that could be about It's probably right, but I
52:29
Speaker 6: don't know. That's what I remember, like that was a
52:31
Speaker 6: huge thing.
52:32
Speaker 2: I was going to go back into the history where
52:34
Speaker 2: people used to call hot girls tomatoes. That's where hot
52:37
Speaker 2: tomato really.
52:40
Speaker 1: Ye, that makes way more sense.
52:45
Speaker 6: I don't know, But yours makes more sense.
52:47
Speaker 1: Well, I mean mine makes more logical sense. Yeah, I
52:49
Speaker 1: didn't know that makes sense.
52:50
Speaker 6: Yours makes more sense. Mine makes just more timely. Yes,
52:56
Speaker 6: we you know.
52:57
Speaker 2: This is what is the magic of our our team
53:01
Speaker 2: is that we all come from different We none of
53:07
Speaker 2: us know the answer, but we all have theories.
53:10
Speaker 5: I know, the person who pickles everything and sells on
53:14
Speaker 5: the basis you can pickle anything.
53:17
Speaker 6: That's the only pickle person I know.
53:18
Speaker 1: Fine, find the pickle.
53:21
Speaker 4: You know.
53:23
Speaker 1: We're going off the rails.
53:25
Speaker 5: We are.
53:27
Speaker 6: Completely literal. So I'm hungry. Apparently Stunk has been growling
53:32
Speaker 6: the entire time, So.
53:37
Speaker 1: Time to have some girl dinner. Just keep chilling. These
53:45
Speaker 1: questions must be answered, Joey.
53:47
Speaker 6: We need you, I think we need you back on First,
53:51
Speaker 6: we have to have you research those things.
53:53
Speaker 3: Do you know?
53:54
Speaker 6: Actually did you say you did know? Did we cut
53:56
Speaker 6: you off?
53:56
Speaker 5: That?
53:57
Speaker 6: What a pickle girl and a tomato girl?
53:59
Speaker 4: Well, it has more to do with and this is
54:02
Speaker 4: where these are ones. I'm like, I'm not is concerned.
54:05
Speaker 4: I think these are more just like fun little trends
54:07
Speaker 4: people are doing.
54:08
Speaker 1: But it's like tied to.
54:13
Speaker 4: I like, it is still very much tied to like
54:18
Speaker 4: aesthetics and like how you're dressing, how you're doing your makeup,
54:23
Speaker 4: all of that. I just don't exactly know what it
54:26
Speaker 4: is because what is that? What is tomato? How does
54:31
Speaker 4: that translate into fashion?
54:33
Speaker 5: But?
54:34
Speaker 6: Oh, I think Annie's moron than I am.
54:36
Speaker 1: In nineteen twenties, tomato girl not tomato.
54:42
Speaker 4: According to People magazine, it says being a tomato girl
54:47
Speaker 4: calls for a hyper specific wardrobe too. Must have pieces
54:51
Speaker 4: include picnic appropriate dresses, flowey linen pants, headscarves, woven handbags,
54:59
Speaker 4: and more. The trend is also big on patterns, whether
55:03
Speaker 4: it being chimham I'm sorry, I'm not I don't want
55:08
Speaker 4: to say that, or pinst yeah, or pinstripe islands or florals,
55:13
Speaker 4: and of course artsy food graphics.
55:15
Speaker 1: So again it is like it's tied to uh fashion
55:19
Speaker 1: like fashion trends. Yeah, Ingham, okay, Dingham.
55:26
Speaker 6: That is an old schools Okay, I think that's nineteen twenties.
55:29
Speaker 6: And I think you're right, Annie.
55:30
Speaker 4: Right, I was gonna say that's yeah. I think it's
55:32
Speaker 4: it's it's it's like yeah image. They're very like going
55:35
Speaker 4: for a picnic, going to like this like old fashioned.
55:40
Speaker 4: But yeah, it is interesting that all of these kind
55:42
Speaker 4: of micro identities that we've created for ourselves are all
55:45
Speaker 4: very very rooted in consumerism and buying things to show
55:52
Speaker 4: our sense of self.
55:53
Speaker 1: Yes, identity, you must buy it exactly.
56:00
Speaker 6: I'm just gonna pick a random food and be that
56:02
Speaker 6: girl too.
56:02
Speaker 1: Let me fine one, oh start a transamitta, Oh god,
56:08
Speaker 1: don't do it. The whole episode is about control.
56:16
Speaker 4: Actually start like the latest iteration of like the tried
56:19
Speaker 4: wife whenever.
56:22
Speaker 6: Korean again real racist, could be very Korean. I'm like,
56:27
Speaker 6: well that went bad, that went alright? Four everybody?
56:34
Speaker 2: Oh no, oh, well, well on that note, we have
56:43
Speaker 2: quite a lot more we could discuss later. Thank you
56:49
Speaker 2: so much Joey for coming on. We always love having you.
56:53
Speaker 4: Of course, always love to join y'all, love to get
56:58
Speaker 4: to explain weird Internet stuff to you guys.
57:01
Speaker 6: Yes, yes, giving us in the loop.
57:04
Speaker 1: So thank you. Where can the good listeners find you, Joey?
57:09
Speaker 4: You can find me on Instagram or the app that
57:15
Speaker 4: I'm still calling Twitter at pat not prat that is
57:19
Speaker 4: p a t T n ot p r.
57:21
Speaker 5: A t T.
57:22
Speaker 4: If you want to hear more of the work that
57:25
Speaker 4: I do, you can check out After Lives Lelane Planco's Story,
57:29
Speaker 4: which just finished up its first season. I also am
57:35
Speaker 4: an occasional guest host on There Are No Girls on
57:38
Speaker 4: the Internet slash producer there with Bridget. If you want
57:42
Speaker 4: to hear more, specifically weird internet news and Internet culture stuff,
57:47
Speaker 4: definitely check out that show.
57:50
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, definitely check that out. Thank you again, as always,
57:55
Speaker 2: Joey for doing all this research and listeners. If you
58:00
Speaker 2: would like to contact us, you can. Her email is
58:03
Speaker 2: Stephania Momstuff at iHeartMedia dot com. We are on Twitter
58:06
Speaker 2: at mom Stuff podcast, or on Instagram and TikTok at
58:08
Speaker 2: stuff When Never Told You. We have a tea public
58:11
Speaker 2: store and we have a book you can get wherever
58:12
Speaker 2: you get your books. Thanks as always to our super
58:15
Speaker 2: producer Christina, executive producer Maya, and our contriuter Joey who's
58:18
Speaker 2: here yay, thank you, and thanks.
58:22
Speaker 1: To you for listening.
58:23
Speaker 2: Stephane Never Told You is production of iHeartRadio. For more
58:25
Speaker 2: podcast from my Heart Radio, you can check out the
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58:29
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