Maybe it’s our generation snowflake obsession with being special that makes Basic Bitch such a burn. But then where’s ‘Mundane Man’ or ‘Default Dude’?
Do you like Diptyque candles, Diet Coke, Starbucks, dainty wrist tattoos and cupcakes?
We’ve seen the memes; the mighty Moss has spoken: thou art a BASIC BITCH. Welcome to the club.
The cuss has been in the Urban Dictionary since 2009 and it still counts as throwing serious shade. Cause a catty way of undermining other females is just what womankind needs.
Like most hip-n-happening bibliophiles, I feed on new slang terms. Language is fluid and playful and should be celebrated as such. If we take every new Internet term too seriously cyber trolls will trample us. But this buzzword, and the readiness with which women and men have adopted it into their arson, really irks.
Sure, there’s been some backlash: the wonderful Daisy Buchanan declared herself basic and proud in The Guardian. The glossies composed listicles about why it’s good to be basic (women’s magazines fall firmly in B.B territory though, so it’s preaching to the converted).
But re-claiming the term isn’t enough to undermine the prejudice that motivates it. The offensive crux cuts much deeper than one faddy phrase.
It’s a sentiment that stinks of mid-noughties Middle England at my all-girls grammar school. It’s the concept that made us want to smoke Superkings, backcomb our hair and carve The Libertines lyrics into the desk.
Because it would show complexity… how deep and interesting and not embarrassingly, obediently ‘basic’ we were. Coveting Uggs, sort-of fancying a boy on the bus, trying to get thinner but never intensely enough to cause concern – mainstream made you silly, less worthy of attention and respect.
Maybe it’s our generation snowflake obsession with being special that makes basic bitch such a burn. But then where’s ‘Mundane Man’ or ‘Default Dude’?
If it’s a tongue-in-cheek takedown of middle class pretension or a satirical label for those that like what it’s normal to like, men are just as culpable. Blokes called Dave who love Fifa and drink lager and pine for a Porsche are two a penny – and proud of it.
‘Simple Simon’ and his nursery rhyme friend the ‘pie-man’ have been around since 1764. It’s just as alliterative and potentially scathing, but I’ve yet to hear a man mocked for being ‘such a simple Si’.
All the trappings of Basic Bitchery are distinctly feminine. If anyone actually bought a bloody lady-hand-sized pink Bic, she would be crowned most basic of us all.
It’s an insult used most regularly between women – with varying degrees of spite, ‘humour’ and affection. But it’s still inherently misogynistic.
Of course that doesn’t mean Jessica is deliberately sexist when she tells Emma ‘don’t be so basic’. But, like slut-shaming, body-shaming and ‘what you do mean you don’t want children?’, such assessments are based on a social framework of what is and is not acceptable for women.
Basic bitch is explicitly associated with ‘airhead’ (Google lists the terms as synonyms). Though I’ve yet to find any compelling evidence connecting life’s little likes and intellectual ability. Indeed, the most fiendishly clever Oxford tutor I had the pleasure of knowing came to lectures with a copy of Cosmo in her handbag and a skinny mocha frap.
If this stuff is marketed at woman (aggressively and incessantly), it’s hardly a slight on each consumer’s character if she succumbs to the odd frothy frosted cake. You don’t lose brain-power with each eye-rollingly predictable snack choice. Did they learn NOTHING from Legally Blonde?
But the B.B is vain too. She wants things to looks, smell and taste sweet. Society preaches thin, but rolls eyes at the predictability of faking a full feeling with zero cal diet coke. And how typical to order a low-fat fro-yo or to ask for a coffee ‘skinny’, right?
We are not idiots. We know the battle of the bulge was not won in a splash of skimmed vs whole milk. But let us have our consolations, routines, tastes, whatever.
Aside from the supposed ‘girliness’ and ‘silliness’ and ‘vanity’, the uniting factor in the list of basic bitch attributes is indulgence. Fun, for fucksake: a candle that you look forward to lighting, a pumpkin spiced pick-me-up.
It’s the kind of easy enjoyment you don’t have to work hard to understand or learn to like. By all means go forth and drink bitter cold brew coffee, watch French cinema, and celebrate the subjectivity of taste (and don’t label me for watching Legally Blonde instead).
Back off with your charges of basic bitch and don’t turn life-enhancing personal choices into a scornful label. Or at least stop and consider what’s wrong with liking novelty seasonal coffee, and why you think it’s funny to call women stupid.
It’s misogynistic bullshit, basically.
agirlcalledbruce 