Shari Vaidya - Q3 Blog 9 - Big Brother is Always Watching
Let me set the scene; it’s August 2024, and you are currently x number of TikToks into your nightly doom scroll when you get a video captioned “Blake Lively outed for being a mean girl?”
Ok, so you are a bit confused (don’t worry, I was as well), so you click on the comments and see comment after comment of people disguising misogyny as critical comments. As you scroll, you see these words repeated throughout the comment section: mean girl and girl’s girl.
What if I told you that these words and the entirety of the Blake Lively “mean girl gate” are a direct propagation of misogyny in today’s culture? I know it sounds insane, but trust me.
The word girl’s girl likely originated from TikTok; its definition is someone who uplifts other girls and follows the infamous “girl code.” Sounds good on paper, right?
Unfortunately, this word and the phrase “pick-me girl” (a girl who craves male validation and attention, her means of getting these things is differentiating herself from other women and putting them down) have been used to police women and their behavior. A famous example is the smear campaign against Blake Lively.
During the press of her movie “It Ends With Us,” these phrases were used to justify the misogynistic “witch burning” of the famous actress. Months after the press tour, Lively came out with a bombshell lawsuit against co-star Justin Baldoni for workplace sexual harassment. During the tour, Baldoni was heralded as a “feminist king,” while Lively was being dragged through the mud for being a “mean girl” and for her rude interviews.
So, when the lawsuit came out, the damage had already been done; she was mocked and metaphorically burned at the stake for speaking out against a well-liked man.
My point is that language is powerful, and while these words were first used to critique the patriarchy, they very quickly became tools that help the patriarchy police women. These words in the modern context have been used to make sure that women stay submissive and agreeable. I would rather be seen as “too woke” than participate in faux-feminism.
I’ve only heard wisps about the Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni situation, so forgive me for my limited insight, but it’s appalling that someone who has committed sexual harassment is a “feminist king.” Reputation and social image manipulating people’s perspectives of certain words or actions detracts attention from the real issues at hand, with this bias clouding judgement. Not to mention how women often bear the brunt of online criticism; double standards favoring men as users bash women for being rude, yet rush to defend men for doing the same. There’s no “pick-me guy,” but women aren’t the only ones seeking validation from outside their own community. Although being a “girl’s girl” is typically positive, like you said, it also insinuates that those who don’t necessarily comply with the unspoken rules are excluded from this group. The “girl code” isn’t applicable in all situations; women can obviously make mistakes, but for another woman to hold others accountable and be labeled “not a girl’s girl” leads to antagonization of women by women. The phrase has been warped to include a status of superiority, a clique that supports women “unconditionally,” and those who don’t are cruel and shameful.
ReplyDeleteThis usage of language to suppress others isn’t just with terms regarding women; being labeled as “too woke” or being told you’re “DTM” prevents any further conversation of problematic actions. Acknowledging the double-sidedness in trendy speech isn’t going overboard when there are negative implications associated with them. One of the ways someone might be “doing too much” is blowing up a small issue, but problems like prejudice should never be considered insignificant.
I will admit, I’m completely unfamiliar with the situations and people you discuss, but your argument about how this controversy about Blake Lively is due to misogyny seems to make a lot of sense. The discussion you added about different online slang terms for women was really helpful for me since I don’t keep up with current events and slang quite as much as I should, and I’m sure it would be helpful for others who aren’t aware of these terms and their meanings.
ReplyDeleteWhile I was aware of these slang words and their general meaning, I honestly didn’t know that they were often used online to police women’s behavior! From what I saw of these terms, I often saw them used to describe specific stereotypes in media, and never really thought about how these could also be used to criticize or encourage the actions of real-life women.
Your use of the term “witch-burning” reminded me of the Crucible, and I felt it really connected to your topic, since the situation of the Crucible starts with one girl accusing others of witchcraft and causing the community to turn against these people, many of which are female. This is similar to the controversy involving Lively that you center on, since the community, the internet in this case, turned on Blake Lively due to the accusations of a few people that grew.