LOOKING AWAY

bimboism, irony, choice advocacy, and resistance as a "one-size-fits-all" effort

The first tiktok discourse I ever engaged in was the conversation about whether “bimboism” was an inherently feminist social identifier or way of life. On one end, bimboism was regarded as a sort of global counterculture with a distinctively american touch, subversive in its unashamed celebration of femininity, leaning into negative stereotyping of women as airheaded morons, while maintaining a sense of community and sense of oneself amongst other women, which all but guaranteed that anyone who considered themself a bimbo in 2023, even ironically, was aligning themselves with the true values of feminist practice (interesting article here). On the other end, people wondered how it could possibly be feminist to check out, act dumb and disinterested, and potentially infantilize oneself (“I’m just a girl!”) in order to avoid any true and meaningful engagement with a world in which beauty and gender conformity are invaluable currency. What seemed like a wholly silly premise led to one of the most interesting and nuanced conversations about choice feminism I’ve yet seen.

Many social media content creators have taken to building platforms riding the popularity of the bimbo character or lifestyle, creating media for “girl brains” to understand, using shallow analogies, metaphors that completely evade the true gravity of any situation, and of course allow infinite replayability and catchy soundbites to be regurgitated later by an audience that didn’t have interest in any wider research, anyway. One of the appeals of this sort of platform is that there is never any true engagement with anything negative, heavy or complex; everything is cut up and proportioned to be just easy enough to swallow that no chewing must be done. Bite sized pieces of information are made readily available for consumption in an era where a person’s entire sense of self is based almost entirely around what they consume in a nation that “is such a haven for commercialism and consumerism” where “we are all products to be sold,” Matilda Eklund of Braindead Bookclub (on Substack) put so neatly.

Additionally is the aspect of irony that is ever important in this type of content: everything about bimboism or the “dumbing it down” content style (even in those that embrace it with true earnestness) is slippery with irony, meant to never be taken too seriously, even on it’s own terms. “If everything is ironic we never have to face it, or it’s impact, and especially not where it comes from,” Matilda wrote to me. The emotional impact of the events, history, and harm done or endured isn’t meant to be captured in this type of video; you’re supposed to watch the video, recite it bar for bar in a tiktok comment section or on twitter, and have just enough context to get what everyone else online is talking about, but not enough real information to make sense of what anyone is actually saying, bringing you right back to content that counts on you thinking you’re dumb and can’t understand complex topics to get views.

Bimboism is the natural child of choice feminism: the idea that every choice a woman makes can be reasonably argued as “feminist” if the woman in question seems to have consented, even dubiously, to the choice she is making regardless of social coercion or expectations, economic factors, and so on. The earliest example of this term that I could find in academic writing or literature is in “Choice Feminism and the Fear of Politics” by Michaela J. Furguson of the University of Colorado (read the abstract here), but the term has likely floated around for a few decades now. Maybe along these lines might exist a phrase that describes the way that intentionality and internal belief are weighted so heavily, that even when someone might be doing something harmful, they are able to evade criticism because doing or thinking anything at all is better than doing nothing in the eyes of those who believe that thoughts and intention matter more than impact and action.

“Bimboism” and choice feminism are not the true subject of my criticism here. The two are catching a few strays from me when my target is actually something much, much larger than bimboism could ever hope to be; they’re the perfect microcosm of American culture and it’s reflex to dodge, to evade, and to quite literally check out intellectually and emotionally in acts of self-preservation when feeling endangered or threatened, when those with the greatest ability to check out so entirely were never in danger to begin with. The idea that simply watching the atrocities unfold is “enough” has become common place. “Allyship fatigue” is worming its way back into the cultural lexicon, with its more irritating cousin “boycott fatigue” making its debut (this term can be defined as feeling fatigued with the responsibilities and tasks of boycotting a corporation, as in the boycotts of McDonald’s, Starbucks to hurt the profits of corporations that support the IDF during the Gazan genocide). All of these aspects come to form a refusal to feel quite literally a single thing that isn’t desirable, even if at the expense of others, also known as the right to comfort.

A defining moment for me in my worldview came last summer when attending an artists’ panel moderated by a professor at my university. A white woman artist had described her work as “inherently feminist” everywhere you looked for information about her; her brand and her marketing centered entirely around this statement of inherent feminism. Every artist was asked about their work’s messages by the moderator of the discussion. When it was her turn to talk about her work, she explained her ideas and the by-line that could be found in her marketing materials, that her work was feminist for the fact that it existed; in attempting to draw more from the artist than what could be found on her website, the moderator asked her HOW her work was feminist; who is it meant to advocate for and how does it achieve this goal? What was the message that was feminist? The artist’s work focused on sustainability and motherhood, but when asked a single question about HOW this work was feminist, the artist was at a loss. It was clear that she believed that by nature of being an artist and a woman, that her artwork was advocacy in and of itself.

To be clear, I don’t believe that this artist’s work was unfeminist by any stretch of the imagination. I’m hopeful that with more consideration, she could have justified this work as feminist in whatever way she wanted to. But in seemingly having never thought about how her message might be received, her ideas had become muddled and unclear; if asked to describe her work as anything, feminist would simply not be the word that came to mind if I hadn’t been familiar with the artist’s angle for getting her work out into the world. The entire situation gave me such clarity about the nature of so many people’s political positions: for many, what it means to say or think is the same as what it means to do. To feel bad for a few minutes or hours means they have done enough.

Much of the late-stage capitalist feminist movement’s defanging can be attributed to the fact that today, social currency is gained through using political movements as identifying traits or personality aspects, rather than actions and praxis. This is how many leftists can live in theory, intellectualizing the mechanics of class oppression, while being completely indistinguishable from someone who might be on the opposite end of the political spectrum in the practice of their beliefs. If they so choose to never confront these ideas that are claimed for social currency and intellectual superiority amongst peers, the average American leftist or feminist or antiracist can functionally betray the people they claim to fight for without even lifting a finger, simply for the fact that they aren’t doing anything at all besides talking about how important it is to rest and look away and pull back when feeling threatened or tired or even just uncomfortable.

Simply existing is an act of resistance for many, but not for everyone. Not even for most people is existence an example of resistance. Resistance has not and will never be a “one size fits all” campaign. The idea of “rest as resistance” has been bastardized, completely coming away from its intended audience and encouraging even greater apathy amongst the people who weren’t invested in class struggle to begin with. And the greatest harm of choice feminism, or even the personality advocacy I’ve described in the above paragraph, is believing that every action someone might take with halfway decent intentions is helpful to the cause it hopes to support.

Cutsie-fying and meme-ifying and removing the emotional impact to a point where someone only engages with what they feel comfortable and willing to engage with has seemed like a continuation of a mass refusal to engage with things that require the critical thinking lenses that many Americans simply haven’t been able (or willing) to form with an increasingly unaffordable world, stagnating wages, and more Americans than ever working two or three jobs. Honestly everyone is so tired and miserable oftentimes the easiest thing to do is to just check out and assume the right to comfort propagated by the United States. The best and most credible information can be found behind a paywall, and what information might not be behind a paywall is so riddled with bias and misinformation, it may as well have the word “propaganda” stamped over it in red ink for all to bear witness. American individualism encourages not just the sufferings of Americans in silence, but more than that, American individualism emphasizes self-preservation above all; checking out emotionally and intellectually when uncomfortable is the stamp of approval needed by our governments to continue doing what it sees fit for the sake of profit, global imperialism, or maintaining the distance of wealth between the elite and the subaltern.

I don’t know when I started to ask myself who benefits from any given action I might take. Who benefits from me hating my acne? Who benefits from me hating my skin, or my teeth? Who benefits from me hating my body? Obscure as it may seem, there are always unseen parties that benefit from every opinion, idea, action or inaction a person might have, hold or take. Skincare industries worldwide thrive because I want clear, soft skin. I think my parents spent fifteen grand on cosmetic braces for my family. Entire industries and billions of dollars have been made and spent because of how many women loathe their bodies. But who benefits when you check out and decide to distance yourself from things that make you uncomfortable, so much so that you refuse to engage with it in any meaningful way? What really happens when you look away, or worse, coat everything in such a slick layer of irony it slips between your fingers before you actually get a chance to see it?

I encourage you to look and to keep looking.

And, unequivocally, from the river to the sea.