I often find myself guilty of the very thing I claim to hate– the deprecation of women through jokes. As social media trends gain traction and begin to seep into our daily language, the trend of women being less than will never go out of style. Trends like girl math, blue job or pink job, girl dinner or “I am just a girl” remain prevalent in media; while the terms are mostly coined by women, it seems as though they paint women out to be weak, dumb, fragile or incapable. I make these jokes consistently throughout my day because it honestly feels easier to reduce myself to what people expect from me as a girl rather than defying these expectations.
Girl Math
“Girl Math” is the concept of changing the rules of math to justify shopping purchases. For example, dividing the cost by the number of wears makes the top you want to buy no longer 40 dollars but instead five dollars per wear. Branding math as “Girl Math” when it comes to shopping and working around budgets seems as though it might be creating a bad rap sheet for women who might be genuinely interested in math. I often find myself laughing with my sister when shopping about “Girl Math” as I add another dress to the cart; when we explained this concept to our mother she seemed perplexed. She was confused as to why we would willingly make ourselves seem as though we cannot do math or have to justify shopping with our own money because of our gender. I think my mom is right (as always) and maybe we should not label academic subjects as “for girls” because it is related to shopping.
Blue Job or Pink Job
Blue and Pink Jobs are yet another joke trending on social media that reduces women to household tasks and men to more manual labor tasks. This joke feels more innocent as it serves more as an excuse to get out of a task rather than saying women can only do one type of job and men can only do another. However, I feel like this joke got old quickly, and perhaps instead of saying it is a job for a boy because we do not want to do it, maybe we could just say we do not want to do it.
Link to a TikTok video by @meganbowen providing examples of Blue and Pink Jobs
Girl Dinner
Perhaps the most harmful trend that uses jokes to make women feel less than is “Girl Dinner.” Girl Dinner has social media users showing off an unhealthy portion of food that would leave many still hungry after and labeling it as for girls. In an article by Zoe Marquez for the North Polk Orbit she goes more in-depth on the subject. This trend promotes eating less and not eating nutritious meals because it seems silly to do so. While this trend was once just an array of eclectic meals, now it shows barely a meal at all and what once was a relatable joke for women turned into another way to show off how eating less is normal for women and young girls.
“I Am Just a Girl”
This saying can be used after pretty much any event where a mistake was made or a shortcoming is revealed. An example of this is saying something like “Oops I hit a curb, oh well I am just a girl.” These flaws are chalked up to the gender of the person and often relate once again to shopping, bad driving and all other stereotypes of women that currently exist.
On the other hand, I have seen it bond women in ways I do not typically see with social media trends. I see girls laugh over the joke together and it’s almost an immediate talking point and aspect of relatability. While women are complex and we all have differing personalities and interests deep down we are just girls trying our best.
