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motherfucker-somewhat-limited · 3 years

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Why the “reclaim bimbo” trend has taken off and why I fucking hate it so much

I think most people are familiar by now with the whole Bimbofication trend by now - the movement that says that it’s woke and feminist, actually, to completely lean into sexist and objectifying stereotypes - and now I’m going to try to articulate why I hate it so goddamn much. @classical-dyke already made a great post about how bimbo-ism can be seen as a mainstream cultural response to the VSCO trend, and we all know that corporations will jump on any trend that allows them to sell you stuff (I could argue that Hydroflask and performative environmentalist companies made a killing off of VSCO but whatever) so I’m not gonna talk about those.

What I am gonna attempt to articulate is the way that (white) feminism and performative activism have strayed so far that they’ve circled back to bite themselves in the asses.

Performative activism - emphasis on “perform”

The modern social media landscape has evolved such that it is more important to appear “woke” than to actually be involved in, or even know anything about, the issues you discuss. We all know this. It’s why giant corporations bust out the rainbows every June and why I have to suffer through endless MCU #Girlboss edits.

On an individual level, it means that every single thing you do online has to be tied in to your personal politics, and god help you if those politics aren’t the right ones. Every musician you listen to has to be a shining star of social responsibility. Every show you watch either needs to be completely unproblematic, or you have to prepare a fully sourced essay with MLA-format citations about Why It’s Okay For You To Like This Thing Because It Helps You Process Your Personal Trauma Or Whatever to whip out every time you make a post. The whole CARRD/putting your life story in your bio thing.

And in the case of bimbos, insisting that liking crop tops and glittery eyeshadow means you’re a communist, actually.

I think capitalism sucks and pushing back against the endless waves of advertising and monetizing is great. Every time I see someone selling t-shirts of a current event that happened 5 minutes ago I vomit in my mouth a little. But people have taken it to such extremes now that if you profess to like material goods or anything mainstream, you’re an evil dirty capitalist and also complicit in everything wrong in society.

Nobody is allowed to just like stuff anymore. You either have to loudly and constantly proclaim how horrible it is or loudly and constantly explain why you like your pink lip gloss and why it’s okay and doesn’t conflict with your infallible wokeness. So what we end up with is this group saying that not only is having your tits out on social media leftist, the two are actually intrinsically tied.

Not Like Other Girls, pink flavor

When I was in high school, I wore baggy t-shirts and sneakers instead of makeup and high heels and dresses. I read books and had smart people thoughts instead of listening to pop or having crushes on boys. I was Not Like Other Girls (the unspoken implication here being that I was better than other girls) because I didn’t rely on shallow physical beauty and sex appeal for a sense of self-worth.

(What I actually was, was fucking gay, but I didn’t realize that until halfway through college. Also, pop music is catchy and fun.)

Bimbos wear lots of makeup and glitter. They like the color pink and tight skirts and mesh tops. They act ditzy and suck at math. They are Not Like Other Girls because they can lean into their femininity and sexuality, even going so far as embracing an insulting stereotype created by the men they profess to hate, without compromising their sense of self-worth. In fact, it’s the source of their empowerment!

Do you see a common thread here?

Targeting impressionable young girls

What we get here is a perfect storm of factors that lead to young girls sexualizing themselves and calling it empowerment.

Being a teen or pre-teen is hard. You’re trying to figure out who you are as a person, how to navigate into adulthood, and all you want is to have some goddamn agency in your decisions. And that’s why the bimbo movement fucking sucks, because it takes attractive social and political ideologies (human rights! gender equality! lgbt inclusivity! making personal choices apart from societal expectations!) and then ties it to a full face of expensive makeup and a Victoria’s Secret push-up bra, and now you have 14-year-olds with their tits on TikTok thinking that they’re participating in some sort of radical self-liberation movement. And they can get away with it because they know the proper buzzwords to say to get the Purity Police off their backs.

In some ways, it feels like a betrayal. One of the big draws of feminist/leftist circles for many women was this idea that you don’t have to look Like That to get respect as a human being. You don’t have to be hot and sexy and flawless to have worth. It was a space where you could learn to divorce yourself from mainstream media expectations, to figure out which choices you made because they actually made you happy vs. the choices you made because you liked the rewards society gave you for conformation. But now here come the bimbos with their flawless contour and their surface-level communist rhetoric, and it just completely muddies those waters.

Tl;dr

You are allowed to like things without having to give a full moral justification for it, and that includes liking mainstream things.

Adhering to modern beauty standards while saying you’re doing it for yourself, actually, isn’t the radical move you think it is.

Encouraging minors to hypersexualize themselves is bad.

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