A friend of mine has a theory about how the ultimate aspirational figure in online culture, for both women and men, is the Bad Bitch, defined as someone who is so captivating and attractive that she can become rich and famous just by being/posting herself while also not playing nice. And male anger at this figure (the lowest example being the horny-angry guys who watch things like Whatever) stems mainly from jealousy, that it's so much harder for men to become this idealized Bad Bitch character on the internet.
The It Girl is like the culturally elevated Bad Bitch. The Bad Bitch reads as lower class (at least aesthetically), more explicitly sexual, and more able to be personified by minority women. In contrast, the It Girl is more protected by the plausible deniability (regarding sexuality, social climbiness, desire for attention) that upper-class culture burdens itself while pursuing power, fame, and wealth.
You said that white women experience rivalry with every white It Girl they encounter. That's true, but I've always been more interested in how non-white women experience this rivalry and how recent cultural developments like online-style social justice are used to express this rivalry.
Oh yeah, as an outside observer, desirability seems like definitely a key factor in all this. But it's often a sotto voce reason since it's regarded as unbecoming of educated intelligent women to fight over perceived attractiveness to men. Plus, the language used can sound very incel-ish but with a gender swap.
chris i need to dm you. i'm so disorganized. as always, looooveee reading your thoughts. thank you for deepening this short little bloggy blog. love your insights.
loved this!!! I’m so glad you analyzed the racial aspects of this too—one minor advantage of not being white, I’ve always felt, has been that there was such a chasm between me and most pop culture figures that I felt very little direct mimetic desire or rivalry…so this argument really resonated:
“In a predominantly white society, white women often experience mimetic desire and rivalry with nearly every white it girl they encounter. The ubiquitous presence of white role models in the media means that white women are constantly confronted with figures they are expected to emulate, exacerbating feelings of inadequacy…[which] reveals the pervasive impact of mimetic desire.”
and also loved the discussion of the obsessive need to maintain innocence and purity, as an attempt to preempt cancellation or style oneself as to harmless, vulnerable, endearing for it to happen…
thank you so much celine. it feels amazing t6 be in a writing community with you. you've enriched my experience here, and you really inspire me to read more & provide value to others in this space!
love this essay - it feels connected to the TikTok you posted about white women being jealous of immigrant women, that I can't stop thinking about. You are more right than you'll ever know! White american culture is bleak, if it even exists outside of like "elf on the shelf" so we are def going to be jealous, and the way white women metabolize jealousy can be real fucking scary. I think our lack of culture/community/spirituality beyond capitalism/patriarchy/violence leads us to emmulate these highly visible representatives, even though they're usually visible at the cost of their humanity. So when they inevitably make a mistake, it feels like a huge betrayal, unjust God style, and we turn to the violence and presecution at the core of our identity.
So interesting! I’ve been thinking a lot about discourses of/desires for innocence this year too, particularly at a moment of so much anti-“woke” legislative backlash, which often justifies itself by saying that gender or critical race education makes people feel guilty/badly. Our aversion to working through and amid complicity is so toxic! I totally agree that the whole “I’m just a girl” trend feels like an extension of this anxiety, or a way to make it palatable.
Oh my gosh , so glad you talked about the obsession with innocence and folks trying to preemptively avoid cancellation by maintaining airs.
Growing up in the church this attitude was prevalent as well ( the whole subtle-but-not-subtle holier than thou thing) so to see it occurring in the wider culture is interesting but not surprising. Looks like I’ll be reading more Girard! Thank you for your fantastic work, excellent as always.
This piece really hit me in a way that made me feel called to share vulnerably how it resonates through my own story, and how I see this macro trend is mirrored in micro fractals of intimate social spaces too.
The spaces I’ve found myself in, social circumstance, whatever, always led me to feel a bit more like a bookish, weird girl on the side of things for most of my life. Then in my mid-20s I found myself in a space where some confluence of social situation and how I appeared to people around me gave me access to some It-girl type vibe and it was ABSOLUTELY my own insecurity that made me lean towards that and chase it rather than grounding in my own integrity.
Inevitably, as you write, I ended up being painfully scapegoated and disapproved by the very women who had lifted me up in a (albeit superficial) way I had never experienced before. And though it was painful in the moment, getting to reject and grow past that was such a liberating experience that has allowed me to deepen authentic relationships even more.
The cultural script of white woman victimhood in this scenario would have had me cling to blamelessness and cast those who scapegoated me as villains, but I’ve truly come to see through my own healing that they were just women going through their own pain and struggles and connecting in dysfunctional ways. The cultural pattern you so expertly elucidate was at the root of hurting us all, and I had to accept how even if they had been cruel, I played into and consented to those roles too.
Thanks for writing about this and putting words to something that is hard to describe <3
I loved this. I think this also captures a phenomenon I’ve noticed of a particular level of vitriol white women have (whether consciously or unconsciously) towards racially ambiguous or mixed but ultimately white passing it girls that rise to prominence. I can’t put it into words as eloquently as you have but I feel like conversations around those types of figures tend to escalate rapidly and in a deeply vile way. I think there is some level of confusion as to why such a figure is allotted innocence that has only ever been for someone like them and how can they extract the innocence from them while also replicating the cool factor.
it is quite insidious because it masquerades as empowerment while perpetuating the dynamics it claims to resist. The appearing blameless becomes a defense mechanism, shielding these individuals from the truth of their complicity in the very systems they critique. It's a narcissistic desire! we try to avoid shame when we should be trying to avoid guilt.
anyway this can turn into moral posturing through victimhood...and all of it is about maintaining the illusion of control with their public facing personas and identities
This is super interesting - the "race to innocence" idea is something I think about a lot. I really enjoyed reading your analysis. Even if you didn't care for my piece, it's cool to see it linked and responded to in some way
Brilliant read! I love full-on horror, so I’m currently thinking about those who are fully ignorant of self-actualization. It-girlism seems so exhausting to chase. The internet cycles through these women like bananas. How do you fight off this almost inevitable rot? Is it not maddening? How does one survive while constantly battling to keep their "place"? Spooky.
A friend of mine has a theory about how the ultimate aspirational figure in online culture, for both women and men, is the Bad Bitch, defined as someone who is so captivating and attractive that she can become rich and famous just by being/posting herself while also not playing nice. And male anger at this figure (the lowest example being the horny-angry guys who watch things like Whatever) stems mainly from jealousy, that it's so much harder for men to become this idealized Bad Bitch character on the internet.
The It Girl is like the culturally elevated Bad Bitch. The Bad Bitch reads as lower class (at least aesthetically), more explicitly sexual, and more able to be personified by minority women. In contrast, the It Girl is more protected by the plausible deniability (regarding sexuality, social climbiness, desire for attention) that upper-class culture burdens itself while pursuing power, fame, and wealth.
You said that white women experience rivalry with every white It Girl they encounter. That's true, but I've always been more interested in how non-white women experience this rivalry and how recent cultural developments like online-style social justice are used to express this rivalry.
tea. actually segues into something else i want to wake up, which is how desirability plays a role in all of this. 🫶🏾
Oh yeah, as an outside observer, desirability seems like definitely a key factor in all this. But it's often a sotto voce reason since it's regarded as unbecoming of educated intelligent women to fight over perceived attractiveness to men. Plus, the language used can sound very incel-ish but with a gender swap.
chris i need to dm you. i'm so disorganized. as always, looooveee reading your thoughts. thank you for deepening this short little bloggy blog. love your insights.
Please send!
loved this!!! I’m so glad you analyzed the racial aspects of this too—one minor advantage of not being white, I’ve always felt, has been that there was such a chasm between me and most pop culture figures that I felt very little direct mimetic desire or rivalry…so this argument really resonated:
“In a predominantly white society, white women often experience mimetic desire and rivalry with nearly every white it girl they encounter. The ubiquitous presence of white role models in the media means that white women are constantly confronted with figures they are expected to emulate, exacerbating feelings of inadequacy…[which] reveals the pervasive impact of mimetic desire.”
and also loved the discussion of the obsessive need to maintain innocence and purity, as an attempt to preempt cancellation or style oneself as to harmless, vulnerable, endearing for it to happen…
great writing as always!!
thank you so much celine. it feels amazing t6 be in a writing community with you. you've enriched my experience here, and you really inspire me to read more & provide value to others in this space!
love this essay - it feels connected to the TikTok you posted about white women being jealous of immigrant women, that I can't stop thinking about. You are more right than you'll ever know! White american culture is bleak, if it even exists outside of like "elf on the shelf" so we are def going to be jealous, and the way white women metabolize jealousy can be real fucking scary. I think our lack of culture/community/spirituality beyond capitalism/patriarchy/violence leads us to emmulate these highly visible representatives, even though they're usually visible at the cost of their humanity. So when they inevitably make a mistake, it feels like a huge betrayal, unjust God style, and we turn to the violence and presecution at the core of our identity.
So interesting! I’ve been thinking a lot about discourses of/desires for innocence this year too, particularly at a moment of so much anti-“woke” legislative backlash, which often justifies itself by saying that gender or critical race education makes people feel guilty/badly. Our aversion to working through and amid complicity is so toxic! I totally agree that the whole “I’m just a girl” trend feels like an extension of this anxiety, or a way to make it palatable.
Oh my gosh , so glad you talked about the obsession with innocence and folks trying to preemptively avoid cancellation by maintaining airs.
Growing up in the church this attitude was prevalent as well ( the whole subtle-but-not-subtle holier than thou thing) so to see it occurring in the wider culture is interesting but not surprising. Looks like I’ll be reading more Girard! Thank you for your fantastic work, excellent as always.
This piece really hit me in a way that made me feel called to share vulnerably how it resonates through my own story, and how I see this macro trend is mirrored in micro fractals of intimate social spaces too.
The spaces I’ve found myself in, social circumstance, whatever, always led me to feel a bit more like a bookish, weird girl on the side of things for most of my life. Then in my mid-20s I found myself in a space where some confluence of social situation and how I appeared to people around me gave me access to some It-girl type vibe and it was ABSOLUTELY my own insecurity that made me lean towards that and chase it rather than grounding in my own integrity.
Inevitably, as you write, I ended up being painfully scapegoated and disapproved by the very women who had lifted me up in a (albeit superficial) way I had never experienced before. And though it was painful in the moment, getting to reject and grow past that was such a liberating experience that has allowed me to deepen authentic relationships even more.
The cultural script of white woman victimhood in this scenario would have had me cling to blamelessness and cast those who scapegoated me as villains, but I’ve truly come to see through my own healing that they were just women going through their own pain and struggles and connecting in dysfunctional ways. The cultural pattern you so expertly elucidate was at the root of hurting us all, and I had to accept how even if they had been cruel, I played into and consented to those roles too.
Thanks for writing about this and putting words to something that is hard to describe <3
I loved this. I think this also captures a phenomenon I’ve noticed of a particular level of vitriol white women have (whether consciously or unconsciously) towards racially ambiguous or mixed but ultimately white passing it girls that rise to prominence. I can’t put it into words as eloquently as you have but I feel like conversations around those types of figures tend to escalate rapidly and in a deeply vile way. I think there is some level of confusion as to why such a figure is allotted innocence that has only ever been for someone like them and how can they extract the innocence from them while also replicating the cool factor.
I like this... the "race to innocence"
it is quite insidious because it masquerades as empowerment while perpetuating the dynamics it claims to resist. The appearing blameless becomes a defense mechanism, shielding these individuals from the truth of their complicity in the very systems they critique. It's a narcissistic desire! we try to avoid shame when we should be trying to avoid guilt.
anyway this can turn into moral posturing through victimhood...and all of it is about maintaining the illusion of control with their public facing personas and identities
This is super interesting - the "race to innocence" idea is something I think about a lot. I really enjoyed reading your analysis. Even if you didn't care for my piece, it's cool to see it linked and responded to in some way
Brilliant read! I love full-on horror, so I’m currently thinking about those who are fully ignorant of self-actualization. It-girlism seems so exhausting to chase. The internet cycles through these women like bananas. How do you fight off this almost inevitable rot? Is it not maddening? How does one survive while constantly battling to keep their "place"? Spooky.