‘Are you a leftist who likes to get your t*ts out? Do you like to flick off pro-lifers? Then, this is the place for you!’
This is how Chrissy Chaplkea introduces viewers to #Bimbotok, in a video that has amassed millions of views. As reported by The Cut, the hashtag #Bimbo alone has over a billion views on TikTok.
Typically, according to the Oxford dictionary, a bimbo is defined as an ‘attractive but unintelligent or frivolous young woman’.
Throughout history, bimbos were as much adored as they were silently reviled. Nice to look at, but scarcely respected.
But in recent years on TikTok, the term has transformed from one of disdain to one of endearment, with a number of ‘BimboTokers’ working to reclaim the word’s meaning.
BIMBOS, RISE 💖‼️ #bimbo #bimbotok #fyp #ily #ihatecapitalism
The new, modern bimbo, as defined by Lauren Pitcher at The Cut, ‘finds (versus forfeits) power in expressing femininity’.
While the original bimbo’s power was dependant on the male gaze, a beautifully-decorated-but-hollow Easter egg, the modern bimbo doesn’t need a man to validate their worth, nor do they have to make a choice between looking good and having depth.
The modern bimbo can, instead, have both. This is what BimboTokers try to emphasise to their audience of millions: that you can wear pink, have thick glossy tresses, but also hold your own in complex discussions about philosophy and politics.
The classical dating manuals and girly mags of yesteryear may have advised you to ‘play dumb’ to appeal to a man’s ego, but those days are over.
That’s because you aren’t dressing a certain way to impress a man — you’re doing it to impress yourself. And your false eyelashes and acrylic nails aren’t something to wear to compensate for a perceived lack of intelligence; instead, they’re a suit of armour to make you feel all the more powerful.
have uou ever seen a bigger group of bimbos?? @dollhouse_vip2 #bimbotok #bimbo #fypシ #bimbowalk
Zoe Glatt, a PhD researcher in internet culture and feminism, describes the rise of #BimboTok as a ‘reclamation of the word’. While women were previously boxed into the term by men, they are now using the term to ‘celebrate hyperfemininity whilst disavowing the male gaze.’
Zoe tells Metro.co.uk that #BimboTok ‘is a tongue in cheek and celebratory feminist movement, lighthearted but also radically leftwing’.
As pointed out by Zoe, at the heart of #BimboToker’s content is a rhetoric that is trans-inclusive, antiracist, sex work positive, anticapitalist, and ‘in line with the broadly more socially progressive Gen Z’.
Most TikTok trends tend to pit women against one another. The overly-ornate ‘night luxe’ aesthetic opposes the more simplified ‘clean girl’ aesthetic, chaotic dissociative feminism is described as a response to the perfectionist ‘that girl’ and ‘girlboss’ ideals.
Even the satirisation of the ‘pick me girl’ on TikTok is rooted in ridiculing women who desire male validation in comparison to the Gone Girl-esque ‘cool girl’ who thinks she’s above it all.
If you know you know. 🙄💗 #fyp #bimbo #bimbotiktok #feminism
But when it comes to bimbos, there is no sense of competition or one quality of womanhood winning out over the other since, as Zoe points out, they are ‘less attached to the idea that to be taken seriously they have to subdue their femininity or sexuality’.
However, according to meme librarian Amanda Brennan, the rise in bimbos may have little to do with feminism entirely — and be more to do about the state of the world we’re living in right now.
‘The resurgence of bimbos feels like a direct reaction to the fact that so many unprecedented/giant world events are happening at once, and it’s way too much for people to handle,’ she tells Metro.co.uk.
Indeed, from early 2020, we’ve been stuck in a limbo of permanent ‘unprecedented’ events, and even as we reach a ‘new normal’ with Covid, we’re having to contend with droughts, global warming, the Ukraine war and a recession.
After two years of constant doomscrolling, a lot of us are a bit tired of living like that, Amanda explained. So the resurgence of bimbos, in her opinion, are ‘the next step from ‘smooth brain head empty’ memes’.
‘In 2020 the sentiment was just wanting a smooth brain,’ she explains. ‘But now, after two years of it, people are tired of that and might as well explore who they are, their physicalities, and how that relates to the world where they can.’
‘If everything’s burning down, you might as well be hot and happy on your own terms while it’s happening.’
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