“You’re breaking up with me because I’m too . . . blonde?” Elle Woods drives up to the Harvard campus in her Porsche convertible wearing a hot pink leather suit and a Bottega Veneta bag. Chihuahua in tow, she looks like the fever dream of all the blondes who came before her—effervescent, glitzy, charming. She is a spectacle against the muted tones of the Ivy League, and her arrival sparks mockery. Someone yells from a dorm room above, “Check out Malibu Barbie. . . . Where’s the beach honey?” Driving up to campus, she tells her dog, “Oh Bruiser it’s so exciting! Look, Harvard!” Oblivious to the bemused students who begin to gather, her perky verve is infectious as she proclaims, “This is our new house for the next three years!” Her language is dotted with exclamation points, and her resumé is perfumed.
Cast
your mind back to the year 2007. Motorola Razrs, Juicy Couture tracksuits and
slogan tees were the height of aestheticism. Nuts was still on sale. Everyone
still posted on Facebook. It was the year when reality TV found its footing as
a cultural juggernaut, spearheaded by the supposedly ditsy Valley Girls of
Laguna Beach and the dubious moralism of the Anna Nicole Smith Show. It was
also the year, according to a 13-year-old New York Post headline, of the bimbo.
In a listicle that revels in its cruelty, the tabloid catalogued 2007’s most notorious bimbos, including Amy Winehouse (a 24-year-old “alterna-bimbo” who “they couldn’t make go to rehab”), Jamie-Lynn Spears (a “bimbo-in-training” because she became pregnant at 18 and subsequently monetised her pregnancy photos), Britney, Paris Hilton, Mischa Barton and the bimbo-prototype herself, Anna Nicole Smith. Looking back on the year, the New York Post wrote: “Whether dead, jailed, bald, knocked up, unemployable […] the year gone by was young, ditzy and out of control.”
This, for a long time, was how the world understood what the word bimbo meant. It was a term used to strip young women of their humanness and agency. It inferred sexual promiscuity as a sign of depravity, and a lack of intelligence. It even worked as a tactless stand-in for mental health problems (Britney Spears and Mischa Barton both experienced well-documented psychotic breaks in the mid-noughties, while Amy Winehouse and Lindsay Lohan publicly struggled with substance abuse). It was a concept used to disparage some of the most culturally powerful young women of the time. It conjured up images of big silicon boobs, big bleach blonde hair, tight clothes and heavy makeup, while communicating that all of those things were somehow inherently immoral. The term’s negative connotations are official, even (the dictionary definition of bimbo is: “a derogatory term for an attractive but frivolous woman”).
The mainstream backlash against bimbos in the Y2K-era and even the preceding 90s -- when it entered the political realm for the first time thanks to Monica Lewinsky -- was intense. Since then, massive cultural shifts, whether that’s the commodification of GirlBoss culture, or the #MeToo movement, have brought feminism further into mainstream discourse than ever before. Politics has shifted too; with the centrism of the late 90s and mid-00s giving way to a more fractious, violent political landscape which has birthed a generation of young people who are more politically engaged, and, generally speaking, more politically progressive, than any of their predecessors.
It’s perhaps inevitable then, that the past few years the lure of the bimbo, as a transgressive, feminist, radically left wing figure, has begun to creep back into our collective imagination. And, because it’s 2021, it’s obviously happening mostly on TikTok. Bimboification videos, which first began showing up on the app last year, have exploded in popularity during the pandemic, and bimboism, in the process, is being reclaimed not as a misogynistic stereotype, but instead as a mentality, an aesthetic, and a way of life.
“I have always been a self-identified bimbo, however I didn’t fully embrace it until the recent wave of new age bimbos debuted on TikTok,” says Hannah Foran, a self-confessed 23-year-old Bimbo from Bristol, Tennessee. BimboToks like “how to be a bimbo 101” (which lists tips like “worship the girls, the gays and theys” and “blackmail and manipulate old trumpee sugar daddies'' inspired Hannah to adopt the FYP niche into her everyday lifestyle. She now boasts over 56,000 followers of her own on TikTok, where she posts -- as user @parishiltonsleftitty, natch -- about everything from bimbo fashion to living as a bimbo with borderline personality disorder.
In a listicle that revels in its cruelty, the tabloid catalogued 2007’s most notorious bimbos, including Amy Winehouse (a 24-year-old “alterna-bimbo” who “they couldn’t make go to rehab”), Jamie-Lynn Spears (a “bimbo-in-training” because she became pregnant at 18 and subsequently monetised her pregnancy photos), Britney, Paris Hilton, Mischa Barton and the bimbo-prototype herself, Anna Nicole Smith. Looking back on the year, the New York Post wrote: “Whether dead, jailed, bald, knocked up, unemployable […] the year gone by was young, ditzy and out of control.”
This, for a long time, was how the world understood what the word bimbo meant. It was a term used to strip young women of their humanness and agency. It inferred sexual promiscuity as a sign of depravity, and a lack of intelligence. It even worked as a tactless stand-in for mental health problems (Britney Spears and Mischa Barton both experienced well-documented psychotic breaks in the mid-noughties, while Amy Winehouse and Lindsay Lohan publicly struggled with substance abuse). It was a concept used to disparage some of the most culturally powerful young women of the time. It conjured up images of big silicon boobs, big bleach blonde hair, tight clothes and heavy makeup, while communicating that all of those things were somehow inherently immoral. The term’s negative connotations are official, even (the dictionary definition of bimbo is: “a derogatory term for an attractive but frivolous woman”).
The mainstream backlash against bimbos in the Y2K-era and even the preceding 90s -- when it entered the political realm for the first time thanks to Monica Lewinsky -- was intense. Since then, massive cultural shifts, whether that’s the commodification of GirlBoss culture, or the #MeToo movement, have brought feminism further into mainstream discourse than ever before. Politics has shifted too; with the centrism of the late 90s and mid-00s giving way to a more fractious, violent political landscape which has birthed a generation of young people who are more politically engaged, and, generally speaking, more politically progressive, than any of their predecessors.
It’s perhaps inevitable then, that the past few years the lure of the bimbo, as a transgressive, feminist, radically left wing figure, has begun to creep back into our collective imagination. And, because it’s 2021, it’s obviously happening mostly on TikTok. Bimboification videos, which first began showing up on the app last year, have exploded in popularity during the pandemic, and bimboism, in the process, is being reclaimed not as a misogynistic stereotype, but instead as a mentality, an aesthetic, and a way of life.
“I have always been a self-identified bimbo, however I didn’t fully embrace it until the recent wave of new age bimbos debuted on TikTok,” says Hannah Foran, a self-confessed 23-year-old Bimbo from Bristol, Tennessee. BimboToks like “how to be a bimbo 101” (which lists tips like “worship the girls, the gays and theys” and “blackmail and manipulate old trumpee sugar daddies'' inspired Hannah to adopt the FYP niche into her everyday lifestyle. She now boasts over 56,000 followers of her own on TikTok, where she posts -- as user @parishiltonsleftitty, natch -- about everything from bimbo fashion to living as a bimbo with borderline personality disorder.
“Gen Z have redefined the meaning of bimbo,” Hannah explains. “It’s no longer a dirty word with negative connotations; it’s been restructured from its original meaning. A new age bimbo is thought of as someone who is politically active and values far left views, so in that respect the popularity of the new bimbo is definitely informed by the state of the world today. Everything happening in our world gave Gen Z the momentum to corrupt a derogatory term and resurface it with a polished new identity.” And she’s right: while bimboism is historically deeply entwined with white womanhood, in 2021’s era of bimboification, the parameters are wider.
Coming off the heels of the popularity of the himbo -- a sweet, uncomplicated heartthrob that emerged in 2020 as a balm to sadboi and incel modern masculinity -- 2021’s bimbo doesn’t have to be cis, white, blonde or even a woman to qualify as a member of the inclusive club. In fact, the 2021 bimbo (also known as the thembo or nimbo for non-binary bimbos) renders 2020’s himbo obsolete. 2021’s subversive bimbo defines themselves as a bimbo without adopting the original context, and as a result, they take away some of the misogynistic power with which the term was originally wielded by the patriarchy.
“The definition of a bimbo has expanded from the stereotypical Valley Girl blonde,” says 24-year-old New Yorker Meredith Suzuki (AKA @maeultra), another self-confessed TikTok bimbo. “Anyone of any race, gender, sexual orientation, body type or style aesthetic can become a bimbo. As a QPOC myself, rather than feeling excluded from the conversation, I wanted to set an example.” Meredith explains that bimbos of today are much more concerned with the ideology of being hot, confident and at one with yourself, rather than actually looking a certain way. “It feels powerful and liberating to know that I’m constantly challenging gender and societal norms with hotness,” she adds. “Nothing makes misogynists angrier than women choosing to be hot, appearing dumb and yet being incredibly self-aware. Bimbo is no longer a derogatory term now we’re reclaiming it for ourselves.”
While the bimboification community has exploded on TikTok, the renaissance of the bimbo has been simmering away in the background for the past few years. The podcast You’re Wrong About — which first launched in 2018 but exploded in popularity during lockdown — has spent hours righting the wrongs of history and reclaiming some of its most famous and maligned bimbos, from Nicole Brown and Anna Nicole Smith to Jessica Simpson and Monica Lewinsky.
Pre-2021, the idea of the bimbo was living in corners of the right wing internet too, where offensive memes (which have since been reclaimed by the modern TikTok bimbo) are dissected by incels. One particular viral image, of a woman turning from a mousy bookworm to a dumb, beautiful bimbo, was recently defended by its creator who claimed it was not intended as sexist propaganda, but as bimbo fetish fanart. The figure of the bimbo body in fetish and porn has also become more visible in mainstream adult media in the past few years. The Cock Destroyers’ aesthetic is heavily influenced by bimboism, and on sites like PornHub and XHamster, the bimbo hashtag rakes in hundreds of thousands of views accumulatively. A 2018 article from MEL proclaimed “the bimbo fetish is alive and well” after speaking to a number of self-confessed feminist bimbos. “The term has generally been a pejorative,” the article writes. “But in recent years some women have turned it into a fringe identity.”
Since the piece was published however, the bimboification of our world has spread further, and to think of it just as a fringe identity or view it through a purely sexual, fetishistic lens is to ignore the power of the modern day bimbo. In fact, although the bimbo is a reaction to the current unprecedented times we are living through, it’s not, as you might first expect, a smooth brained empty-headed rejection of those times, but instead a way of metabolising the daily horrors of the news and a way of radicalising our reactions to current events. In short, contrary to popular belief, modern bimbos are the absolute opposite of their smooth brain no thinky stereotype.
“A bimbo is a person using the radical power that comes with playing the performance of hyperfemininity as a form of anti-capitalist critique,” says Stephanie Deig, a PhD researcher specialising in feminist philosophy and gender studies at the University of Lucerne. “Bimbos are subverting the neoliberal expectation that hyperfeminine traits cannot be intellectually substantive. They embody hyperfemininity through gender performance to subvert the things which have been used historically to objectify and oppress women. A bimbo is someone who embodies the notion of hyperfemininity in a radical way. By subverting expectations they are reclaiming the power of that femininity.”
Stephanie’s research is particularly focused on TikTok as an intersectional leftist sphere for the Gen Z bimbos of today to radicalise each other while looking pink and fabulous. “There are so many radical political ideas circulating around in bimboification circles online,” she says, ascribing the collectivism and intersectionality of Gen Z bimboism as a reaction to the previous generation of millennial ‘girlboss’ feminism, which understands female power through a male, capitalist lens. “TikTok bimbos are anti-capitalist while at the same time recognising through this luxurious aesthetic that you can’t fully escape the bounds of capitalism as both a source of pleasure and oppression,” Stephanie explains. “They’re radical, they’re intersectional. They’ve made feminism so much more inclusive than before.”
Today’s radical, politically engaged bimbo makes sense when you realise that, even in the 90s and 00s, the figure of the bimbo was a transgressive one. We can look back in horror at the sexism of “The Year of the Bimbo'' article, while at the same time still see the women it talked about as the transgressive figures Gen Z are celebrating today. “In the 2000s the bimbo was a way women could reject a narrow, limiting view of what a woman should be, and to claim power from the objectification of women’s bodies,” says Stephanie. “That same logic applies now, except it’s become even more inclusive, radical and transgressive when it comes to gender performance. A lot of young queer people, for example, are using the figure of the bimbo to turn sexualisation on its head and use it as a source of power.”
It was easy to dismiss figures like Paris Hilton, Monica Lewinsky, and Britney Spears as vapid bimbos because to do so was to disregard the power they had to carve out reality TV empires, sell millions of records, or cause presidential crises. And while none of those spheres of influence can enact power to change the structural societal, capitalistic means of oppressing women, it doesn’t diminish the fact that they are still routes to power, however flawed. Even fictional bimbos of the past point us to TikTok’s current iteration of the radical leftist bimbo; the ultimate bimbo, Elle Woods, might have been hyperfeminine, but she was nonetheless a deeply feminist character (albeit one who upheld the problematic prison industrial complex through her work as a lawyer). And a quick look over the FYP, or your Depop, shows that it’s not just the politics of 00s bimbos that appeals to Gen Z, but the aesthetic too, whether that’s pink Juicy Couture tracksuits, slogan tees or bedazzled flip phones.
It’s this particular set of circumstances -- the resurgence of Y2K aesthetics, a video-led platform for bimbos in training to converse and grow, the information overload of a pandemic and election year, and the radicalisation of disenfranchised youth by late capitalism, like duh -- that makes 2021 the perfect time to usher in The Year of the Bimbo, 2.0. “During these times when we’re spending more time alone, we’re thinking more about our relationships with ourselves and our bodies,” Stephanie says of the perfect timing that’s led to the rise of the bimbos. “We’re thinking about how our bodies serve us. Gen Z are using TikTok to have frank conversations about how we can use our bodies, and its transmitting theory in a frank, concise way in such an open space. That feels revolutionary.”
Another of the TikTok bimbos puts it slightly differently. “Anyone can be a bimbo,” they say. “It’s about applying a mindset to your way of life. Women and queer people have been oppressed by the patriarchy, and being a bimbo is a rejection of all that. It’s a way of finding empowerment where you’ve been taught to feel ashamed.” And to quote one bimbo god, that’s hot.
2021 is the year of the bimbo. By Roisin Lanigan. i-D, January 19 , 2021
The
bimbo is back and Gen Z is reclaiming it with a leftist flair.
The modern bimbo is hyperfeminine, embraces their hotness, and rejects the capitalist mentality that they must showcase marketable skills.
Bimbofication isn't exclusively for cis women — everyone who aligns themselves with femininity and finds joy in being ditzy can identify as a bimbo. Above all, the modern bimbo isn't necessarily uneducated or unintelligent, but their personality doesn't revolve around their degrees and resúmé. The modern bimbo takes the male gaze that's been unavoidable since birth and creates a caricature of it by performing vanity and cluelessness.
Despite the derogatory origins of the word "bimbo," used to dismiss beautiful women as unintelligent, Gen Z is leading the effort to reclaim the word. Syrena, a 21-year-old self-proclaimed "intelligent bimbo" who goes by the handle fauxrich, offered a diagnosis in a recent viral TikTok.
"Do you not care about society's elitist view on academic intelligence? Do you support all women regardless of their job title and if they have plastic surgery or body modifications?" Syrena asks her followers in a singsong lilt, before asking if they also dream of owning dozens of shoes and idolize the late model Anna Nicole Smith. "I'm no doctor, but I think you may be a New Age bimbo!"
The prognosis: pink glitter and Juicy Couture velour sweatsuits.
The bimbo's resurgence is especially popular on TikTok, where, as Rolling Stone put it, bimbos are something of an "aspirational figure." The tag #bimbo has just over 81 million views. The tags #bimbotiktok and #bimbofication have 8.9 million views and 5.8 million views, respectively.
The phrase "bimbofication" gained notoriety in 2017, when an illustration of a buxom woman in a minidress picking up a book and transforming into someone more conservatively dressed went viral. Though the artist insisted that it was fetish art, not an anti-feminist condemnation of sexually confident women, the internet was outraged over the implication that women could be either hot or intelligent. In a Deviantart blog post, the artist apologized for offending people, and wrote that the image was meant to satisfy a client's kink, not make a statement.
The modern bimbo is hyperfeminine, embraces their hotness, and rejects the capitalist mentality that they must showcase marketable skills.
Bimbofication isn't exclusively for cis women — everyone who aligns themselves with femininity and finds joy in being ditzy can identify as a bimbo. Above all, the modern bimbo isn't necessarily uneducated or unintelligent, but their personality doesn't revolve around their degrees and resúmé. The modern bimbo takes the male gaze that's been unavoidable since birth and creates a caricature of it by performing vanity and cluelessness.
Despite the derogatory origins of the word "bimbo," used to dismiss beautiful women as unintelligent, Gen Z is leading the effort to reclaim the word. Syrena, a 21-year-old self-proclaimed "intelligent bimbo" who goes by the handle fauxrich, offered a diagnosis in a recent viral TikTok.
"Do you not care about society's elitist view on academic intelligence? Do you support all women regardless of their job title and if they have plastic surgery or body modifications?" Syrena asks her followers in a singsong lilt, before asking if they also dream of owning dozens of shoes and idolize the late model Anna Nicole Smith. "I'm no doctor, but I think you may be a New Age bimbo!"
The prognosis: pink glitter and Juicy Couture velour sweatsuits.
The bimbo's resurgence is especially popular on TikTok, where, as Rolling Stone put it, bimbos are something of an "aspirational figure." The tag #bimbo has just over 81 million views. The tags #bimbotiktok and #bimbofication have 8.9 million views and 5.8 million views, respectively.
The phrase "bimbofication" gained notoriety in 2017, when an illustration of a buxom woman in a minidress picking up a book and transforming into someone more conservatively dressed went viral. Though the artist insisted that it was fetish art, not an anti-feminist condemnation of sexually confident women, the internet was outraged over the implication that women could be either hot or intelligent. In a Deviantart blog post, the artist apologized for offending people, and wrote that the image was meant to satisfy a client's kink, not make a statement.
The image took on a life of its own, and inspired memes, spin-offs, and even fanfiction that imagined the various versions of the woman as a queer book club. The meme format made a comeback in late November following Harry Styles' Vogue cover, which features the musician in a Gucci ball gown.
Personally, I began jokingly calling myself a bimbo earlier this year when the term "himbo" started trending. Himbos are known for being traditionally masculine men — the himbo is hot and dumb, but above all, he respects women. When viral discourse over the term brought the word back to TikTok, young women asked why the word "bimbo" wasn't met with the same affection. Spoiler alert: It's the same reason femininity has been belittled and dismissed for centuries.
The short answer: Sexism!
Syrena, the 21-year-old diagnosing her followers as New Age bimbos, is a college student studying health science. As a woman in a rigorous educational program, Syrena rejects the expectation that to be taken seriously in professional or academic settings she has to distance herself from hyperfemininity.
"I think we don't have to 'be' anything to be taken seriously, as women should be taken seriously in all spaces regardless of how they look," Syrena said over Instagram DM. "I think all-inclusive feminism includes boss babes, sluts, bimbos, PhD holders, single moms, and just ALL women in general ... The people who believe it's anti-feminist are those who believe bimbos are who they are for the male gaze, which is completely untrue."
Syrena added that she herself had to unlearn her own "inner male gaze" in the process of identifying as a bimbo. Diving headfirst into the hyperfeminine should not be equated to giving in to the male gaze. The TikTok creators who identify as bimbos have made it clear they're putting on the costume not to appeal to men, but to make fun of them. Kate Muir, who posts on TikTok as bimbokate, told Rolling Stone that she uses her online persona to make men uncomfortable by pairing stereotypically feminine visuals with jarring messaging.
"Being a self-aware bimbo is amazing," she captioned one TikTok of herself dancing in front of a mirror. "You become everything men want visually whilst also being everything they hate (self-aware, sexually empowered, politically conscious.) Reverse the fetishisation of femininity."
The real appeal of the term, aside from consciously choosing to lean into your inherent hotness, is rejecting the societal expectation that women must have it all. (Anyone, Syrena explained in another video, can be hot with confidence.)
To have some sort of value in American society, the modern woman is expected to be compassionate and maternal, but also ambitious and goal-oriented. On top of that, women are pressured to meet a constantly changing beauty standard. Juggling all of these expectations is so exhausting and instilled in women from such an early age, it's taking a psychological toll on teenage girls. In his book The Triple Bind: Saving Our Teenage Girls From Today's Pressures, University of California, Berkeley, psychology professor Stephen Hinshaw described the juggling act as excelling at "girl skills," achieving "boy goals," and being "models of female perfection." Between conflicting messaging about being both family- and career-oriented, plus immense pressure to be sexually appealing from a young age, the teenagers Hinshaw profiled in his case studies were "set up for crisis" and at higher risk for anxiety, depression, and other mental health disorders.
Which is why the bimbo resurgence is transgressive — by leaning into the caricature of femininity, Gen Z's New Age bimbos are turning the male gaze back on itself.
Jaime Hough teaches introductory gender studies courses at Washington State University and wrote her PhD dissertation on women's expression of sexuality. Dealing with that triple bind, as Hinshaw describes it, is an exhausting, lifelong juggle. Hough is especially enamored by the resurgence of the bimbo because it's such a middle finger to that triple bind.
"I think part of bimbofication is saying I'm not going to do it all," Hough said in a phone interview. "Today I'm just going to focus on being pretty, because I want to. I'm going to let go of being assertive, going to let go of caring for everyone else. I'm just going to care for myself, feel good, and look pretty. Fuck the rest of you."
The modern bimbo is inherently anti-capitalist too, because no matter how intelligent, accomplished, and ambitious they may be, contributing to the market is not a priority. Everyone has likely performed some form of unpaid emotional labor at some point in their lives, but women take on more of it than cis men. From waking up earlier than cis male coworkers to get ready in the mornings, to doing the bulk of household duties because men simply "aren't as good at it," to regulating their emotions to appear more approachable.
"In our culture, we rely on women to do almost all the emotional labor we don't teach men how to do," Hough said. "And so, women are always carrying this huge mental emotional burden of thinking not just about what I want to do, but whose feelings are going to get hurt and how can I do it in a way that their feelings don't get hurt? How can I achieve my goals without making anyone feel threatened?"
In addition to the triple bind young women face, all young people are expected to meet some level of productivity. If something isn't directly related to self-improvement, it's not seen as valuable in American culture. The labor and expense women put into maintaining their appearance, Hough added, isn't directly profitable, but that doesn't mean it isn't work. Being a bimbo also involves rejecting the pressure to be constantly productive.
"I believe that productivity is constantly fed to society as being a slave to capitalism by working or thinking about work," Syrena said. "I think productivity can be learning something random that you like."
Identifying as a bimbo is so enjoyable because, whether it's feminist or not, you're allowing yourself to be selfish for once. If you have to spend hours futzing with your appearance to have any value in this capitalist hellscape, why not make it your entire personality?
Don't confuse the New Age bimbo with girlboss second-wave feminism. The New Age bimbo is intersectional, and transcends gender or heterosexuality. Though the classic bimbo is a skinny, blonde, heterosexual white woman, TikTok's modern bimbos are queer, trans, people of all races and of any and all body types. Chrissy Chlapecka, a 20-year-old TikTok creator who wrote the "Bimbo Bibble," styles her videos as open letters to "the girls, the gays, the theys," and "anyone who, unfortunately, likes men."
Anyone who embraces femininity can be a bimbo; TikTok has also come up with the gender neutral term "thembo" to describe someone who's hot, dumb, and respects women. TikTok creator little_sun_boy coined the phrase "bimboy" as a spin-off of himbos. Instead of someone who's large, masculine, and ditzy, the 24-year-old creator explains that the bimboy is small, feminine, and ditzy. In an Instagram DM, little_sun_boy clarified that while the bimboy is feminine and ditzy, he isn't ditzy because he's feminine.
Ultimately, the bimbo's newfound popularity points to a shift away from the belittling of femininity. Hough noted that stereotypical hyperfeminine women in children's media, like Sharpay in High School Musical and Yzma in Emperor's New Groove were written as the movies' villains and, though it's subtle, that messaging only adds to the triple bind young women grapple with in their childhoods.
Nothing is black and white, though, and categorizing traits, goals, and interests into "for boys" and "for girls" is harmful for all impressionable kids. I myself was reluctant to admit my own queerness because I was so insistent that being hyperfeminine could only mean that I was heterosexual, and when I did come to terms with it, I overcompensated by getting rid of my frilly wardrobe and extensive makeup collection. But surprise! You can be two things at once! I, for one, have now leaned even further into hyperfemininity with an even more extensive makeup collection and a newfound zest for wearing over-the-top looks that I put on for my own artistic enjoyment, not for a man's.
Distancing from the color pink is a common experience in feminist circles. Hough and many of her peers in academia were reluctant to embrace the color that had been forced upon them since birth. A 2011 study led by Stefan Puntoni, an associate professor of marketing at the Rotterdam School of Management, concluded that the relentlessly pink, gendered marketing used in breast cancer awareness ads actually may repel the women the ads are targeting. Female participants were less likely to think they were at risk for breast cancer and ovarian cancer when they were shown pink advertisements than when they were shown colorless or neutral-toned ones. Participants were also less likely to donate to the causes when shown pink marketing materials. Puntoni hypothesized that the color pink triggered a "defense mechanism" that made some female participants unconsciously ignore or downplay the advertisement's message.
American culture has a habit of forcing femininity and masculinity on children from birth, so rejecting the color pink is a natural reaction to foisting bubblegum bows and flamingo-toned tutus on infant girls. But distancing yourself from femininity for the sake of distancing yourself from women is just internalized misogyny. The sexist and backhanded compliment "not like other girls" has been reborn and recirculated in different forms over the last two decades, from bimbofication fetish art to the "Bruh girl" versus "Hi girlie" tropes popularized on TikTok this year. Regardless of whether they identify as women, New Age bimbos subvert such patriarchal categorizations by reclaiming femininity without pitting women against each other, whatever their gender may be.
"One of the things I love about this new wave of bimbofication is that it's very anti-hierarchical, and no one's degree makes them better or smarter, that's not a thing we value," Hough said. "This new wave of bimbofication is this idea that this is about self-love and self-pleasure. Anything that gets in the way of that, like traditional educational values or capitalist values, isn't worth it."
But then again, expecting that anything women do must be in the name of subversion goes against the modern bimbo's hedonist principles. All you need to do to be a new bimbo is be feminine, feel pretty, and not particularly care about what men want from you.
Cyndi Lauper put it best in her 1983 bimbo anthem: Girls (and gays and theys) just wanna have fun.
Bimbos are good, actually. By Morgan Sung. Mashable , December 5, 2020.
Chrissy
Chlapecka twirls in front of her mirror in a Paas-colored minidress and
matching faux-fur trimmed coat, her long platinum hair pulled back into two
pigtails. “Hi. Welcome to Bimbo TikTok,” she says breathily, mouth half open, a
vacant stare in her impeccably made up eyes. “You’re probably wondering how you
got here. Are you a leftist who likes to have your tits out? Do you like to
flick off pro lifers? Then this is the place for you. Are you good at math? Are
you good at reading? Well, then if you are, how?”
Chlapecka is one of the de facto leaders of BimboTok, a glittery island in the middle of the wasteland of TikTok’s infinite scroll, where “girls, gays, and theys,” per Chlapecka’s verbiage, engage in a collective performance of hyperfemininity. The bimbo has radically transformed since its years as a tabloid mainstay, when it was used pejoratively to describe everyone from President Bill Clinton’s paramours to Wheel of Fortune hostess Vanna White, as misogynistic shorthand for a vapid, attractive young woman. “It’s such an old school term and all of a sudden it’s become kind of a trend in a way,” says Chlapecka, a 20-year-old Chicago-based barista with more than 475,000 followers, who is leading the charge to transform the bimbo into an all-inclusive, gender-neutral leftist icon.
In some respects, the bimbo hasn’t changed much since the naissance of the term in the early 20th century, when it was used to describe both men and women with diminished intellectual capacities. (The male equivalents, “himbo” and “mimbo,” wouldn’t come to being in the lexicon until the late 1980s.) The bimbo speaks in a flutey, birdlike tone (think a drag queen doing an Ariana Grande impersonation) and has a predilection for push-up bras, ponytails, and copious amounts of winged eyeliner. They wear short dresses and long coats and gold hoops paired with Juicy Couture sweatsuits (which have made a comeback along with early-2000s fashion and are in high demand on the clothing reselling platform Depop) and Viktor and Rolf’s Flowerbomb (or, if you’re on a budget, Victoria’s Secret body spray). Role models include Cardi B, Anna Faris’ character in The House Bunny, porn stars-turned-viral sensations the Cock Destroyers, and the OG smart dumb blonde: Paris Hilton.
In recent years, the bimbo has made something of a resurgence in meme form thanks in part to the popularization of “bimbofication,” a niche erotica fetish that involves the transformation of an understated, normal-looking woman (or man) into a surgically enhanced, spray-tanned camp icon. Influencers like the Danish model and sex worker Alicia Amira, who markets herself on Instagram as the “founder of the bimbo movement,” have built sizable followings leaning into the aesthetic. Among the Gen Z creators on TikTok, however, the bimbo has evolved into an aspirational figure, acquiring something of a political iconography in itself. As defined by Chlapecka and her fellow BimboTokers, the bimbo is staunchly pro-sex work, pro-LGBTQ, pro-BLM, and anti-straight white male; in one of her videos, among the 10 “cummandments” listed in Chlapecka’s “Bimbo Bibble” are “birth control,” “bark at straight people,” and “men stop.”
Perhaps most surprisingly, the Gen Z bimbo is anti-capitalist (indeed, Chlapecka hashtags many of her TikToks #ihatecapitalism). Of course, there’s more than a whiff of irony here, as the bimbo aesthetic is in many ways predicated on consumerist values: as Syrena, who goes by @fauxrich on TikTok, puts it, “it costs a lot of money to be hyperfeminine. Makeup costs a lot of money: primer, eyeliner, lashes. Then there’s the hair, the nails, the clothes. Fillers, Botox, surgeries, that costs thousands of dollars.”
But most bimbos will tell you that bimbofication is less about the ability to afford $40 primer at Sephora and more about a state of mind. “Even though the aesthetic is rooted in consumerism and being all about money and things, we’re trying to push it the opposite way,” says Griffin Maxwell Brooks, a 19-year-old mechanical and engineering aerospace student at Princeton University. “The modern bimbo aesthetic is more about a state of mind and embracing, ‘I want to dress however I want and look hot and not cater to your expectations.'” On TikTok, Brooks favors glittery mesh tops, jangly earrings, jewel-toned hair dye and bedazzled combat boots; with Chlapecka, they are one of the unofficial leaders of the bimbo movement on TikTok, going viral in October with a video of him summarizing the bimbo aesthetic. “The bimbo is not only blissfully and ignorant and spacey but exists at the aesthetic intersection of tackiness and luxury,” they say in the video. “To be a bimbo, one must let go of their former earthly possessions and relationships to adopt a gaudy yet lonely lifestyle.”
Chlapecka is one of the de facto leaders of BimboTok, a glittery island in the middle of the wasteland of TikTok’s infinite scroll, where “girls, gays, and theys,” per Chlapecka’s verbiage, engage in a collective performance of hyperfemininity. The bimbo has radically transformed since its years as a tabloid mainstay, when it was used pejoratively to describe everyone from President Bill Clinton’s paramours to Wheel of Fortune hostess Vanna White, as misogynistic shorthand for a vapid, attractive young woman. “It’s such an old school term and all of a sudden it’s become kind of a trend in a way,” says Chlapecka, a 20-year-old Chicago-based barista with more than 475,000 followers, who is leading the charge to transform the bimbo into an all-inclusive, gender-neutral leftist icon.
In some respects, the bimbo hasn’t changed much since the naissance of the term in the early 20th century, when it was used to describe both men and women with diminished intellectual capacities. (The male equivalents, “himbo” and “mimbo,” wouldn’t come to being in the lexicon until the late 1980s.) The bimbo speaks in a flutey, birdlike tone (think a drag queen doing an Ariana Grande impersonation) and has a predilection for push-up bras, ponytails, and copious amounts of winged eyeliner. They wear short dresses and long coats and gold hoops paired with Juicy Couture sweatsuits (which have made a comeback along with early-2000s fashion and are in high demand on the clothing reselling platform Depop) and Viktor and Rolf’s Flowerbomb (or, if you’re on a budget, Victoria’s Secret body spray). Role models include Cardi B, Anna Faris’ character in The House Bunny, porn stars-turned-viral sensations the Cock Destroyers, and the OG smart dumb blonde: Paris Hilton.
In recent years, the bimbo has made something of a resurgence in meme form thanks in part to the popularization of “bimbofication,” a niche erotica fetish that involves the transformation of an understated, normal-looking woman (or man) into a surgically enhanced, spray-tanned camp icon. Influencers like the Danish model and sex worker Alicia Amira, who markets herself on Instagram as the “founder of the bimbo movement,” have built sizable followings leaning into the aesthetic. Among the Gen Z creators on TikTok, however, the bimbo has evolved into an aspirational figure, acquiring something of a political iconography in itself. As defined by Chlapecka and her fellow BimboTokers, the bimbo is staunchly pro-sex work, pro-LGBTQ, pro-BLM, and anti-straight white male; in one of her videos, among the 10 “cummandments” listed in Chlapecka’s “Bimbo Bibble” are “birth control,” “bark at straight people,” and “men stop.”
Perhaps most surprisingly, the Gen Z bimbo is anti-capitalist (indeed, Chlapecka hashtags many of her TikToks #ihatecapitalism). Of course, there’s more than a whiff of irony here, as the bimbo aesthetic is in many ways predicated on consumerist values: as Syrena, who goes by @fauxrich on TikTok, puts it, “it costs a lot of money to be hyperfeminine. Makeup costs a lot of money: primer, eyeliner, lashes. Then there’s the hair, the nails, the clothes. Fillers, Botox, surgeries, that costs thousands of dollars.”
But most bimbos will tell you that bimbofication is less about the ability to afford $40 primer at Sephora and more about a state of mind. “Even though the aesthetic is rooted in consumerism and being all about money and things, we’re trying to push it the opposite way,” says Griffin Maxwell Brooks, a 19-year-old mechanical and engineering aerospace student at Princeton University. “The modern bimbo aesthetic is more about a state of mind and embracing, ‘I want to dress however I want and look hot and not cater to your expectations.'” On TikTok, Brooks favors glittery mesh tops, jangly earrings, jewel-toned hair dye and bedazzled combat boots; with Chlapecka, they are one of the unofficial leaders of the bimbo movement on TikTok, going viral in October with a video of him summarizing the bimbo aesthetic. “The bimbo is not only blissfully and ignorant and spacey but exists at the aesthetic intersection of tackiness and luxury,” they say in the video. “To be a bimbo, one must let go of their former earthly possessions and relationships to adopt a gaudy yet lonely lifestyle.”
Initially, Brooks received some flak for their use of the term in the video; some assumed that they were using the trope as a way to poke fun at female stereotypes and deride women. Brooks, who identifies as non-binary, denies that was their intention. For them, bimbofication is a way to subvert traditional expectations associated with gender and sexuality. “There’s a lot of internalized homophobia in the gay community,” they say. “In adopting this very feminine aesthetic at times, one of the things I had to do was be OK with no longer fitting this mold so some gay men will not be attracted to me.” For them, bimbofication “isn’t about acting in a way that caters to what men are attracted to. it’s about looking how we want to look, and if that was initially about catering to the male gaze, we’re taking that back.”
“I see it as a way of tackling gender oppression and stereotyping and gender norms,” says Kate Muir, a London-based TikTok creator who goes by @bimbokate. One of her most popular videos features her preening in front of a mirror with the caption, “Being a self-aware bimbo is amazing: you become everything men want visually whilst also being everything they hate (self-aware, sexually empowered, politically conscious, etc.) Reverse the fetishisation of femininity.” Part of the goal of such content, she says, is to present a stereotypically feminine message accompanied by a caption that undercuts the visual message, thus creating a jarring cognitive dissonance and discomfort for the (straight, male) viewer. (This is, apparently, quite an effective tactic: Muir says the vast majority of her hate comments are from straight men, an experience shared by the other female-identified BimBoTok creators interviewed for this piece.) For her, BimboTok is “definitely a feminist movement.”
All of this might have the ring of familiarity. In many respects, the valorization of the bimbo mirrors what writer Ariel Levy wrote about in her 2005 book Female Chauvinist Pigs, women who had internalized the patriarchal values of Playboy and Girls Gone Wild to such an extreme degree that they willingly participated in their own objectification. And indeed, there are many — particularly feminists over the age of 30, who have lived through multiple cycles of various forms of subjugation being marketed as empowering — who balk at the term. “Officially viewing the word ‘bimbo’ as a fucked up thing to say,” viral tweet read. “I’m okay with women who have obviously been called it many times reclaiming it — but if you don’t look like a hyper sexual person and you use that word I feel like you hate women.”
In the midst of the endless vagaries of 2020, however, with much of Gen Z saddled with student debt and skyrocketing unemployment, leaning into bimbofication may be one of the more healthier forms of stress relief out there. “It’s not about being ignorant. You’re letting go of your consciousness in order to achieve this higher level of enlightenment,” says Brooks. “You’re aware of all the shit that’s going on around you, but you’re letting go of it because you want to live the life of being pretty and walking around.” Don’t hate them because they’re beautiful — ask yourself why you’re not.
The Bimbo is Back. Like, for Real ! By EJ Dickson. Rolling Stone, November 23, 2021.
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