My Facebook groups are blowing up over this image.
Blue is read as the bully/the not-nice one, and it’s read as “not like other girls” commentary pitting women against each other, despite the fact that Blue is responding to Blonde’s diss.
I really feel like I’m on a different planet from the Gen Zrs reacting to this image. It’s not even divisive because everyone else but me and the author, seems to see Blue as the asshole in this scenario.
My point is that Blue doesnt owe Blonde niceness at all, because Blonde wasn’t nice to begin with. A snarky comment is about what’s deserved and hers was a really Diet Coke one, which didn’t attack Blonde on the basis of any marginalized identity.
I’m seeing Blue as the one being picked on but Gen Zrs see Blonde as the victim, or the author as the jerk who is pitting women against each other.
I wonder if this is a generational thing.
I feel like Gen Z reads this as two equally mainstream mall shoppers trading quips, or even as a “basic”/“normie” being picked on by a sneering hipster, with the implication that the “normie” is the victim and the trendy girl is in the “in group.”
As a Gen Xr who grew up in the 80s in the San Fernando Valley, Blue would have been the member of the out group and Blonde would have been the socialite/“mean girl.” And Blue may have been drawn to her particular look and or crowd on account of othering and bullying by mainstream people to begin with. I feel like a lot of Gen X snark culture arose as a response to bullying and gaslighting by mainstream people and by Boomers/older, it was a psychological coping mechanism. Blue’s snarky comeback preserved her self esteem, and deflected the insult. It’s how I and a lot of my Gen X friends might have responded to a similar insult.
So anyway it’s interesting to me how apparently nobody younger than me reads this image as “appropriate response to some jerk just walking up and insulting you.”
*Epistemic status: completely half-baked, don’t take this as gospel or even as a real pronouncement*
I’m 24, and I’ve noticed similar rhetoric from people my age and younger. I think my generation took the backlash against “not like other girls” a bridge too far and wound up replicating the exact conditions “not like other girls” girls were responding to in the first place. “Don’t sneer at popular things just because they’re popular” (which, btw, I agree with) turned into “not liking popular things means you need to get over yourself”. In the name of celebrating women whose harmless interests get ripped to shreds, we’ve moved past basic reassurance and into a sort of…celebration of mediocrity. It’s harder and harder to find anything genuinely *original* in modern female youth culture, because it’s out of style. The anodyne “relatability” of group identity is what’s in. If you can’t tie your interests, your thoughts, your Self, to a broader schematic in some way, if you are genuinely and fundamentally individual, you need to get over yourself and get woke.
I have a post in my drafts about how I was super on board with ending girl hate when I still thought it meant “women should stop bullying other women” instead of what it apparently actually means, which is “women should stop resenting the women who bully them.”
This is what I’m talking about.
Wait, Blue is the mean one here?
I would never even have seen that reading. She was minding her own business being quiet with her little skull when Blonde walked up to her and said something judgmental.
Dude, wtf.
No no, she was being weird in public, which clearly displays hostile intent and justifies anything that might be said or done to her in response.
…/s
😤
Like, this is exactly the crap I dealt with in high school, and anyone who sees Blue as the mean one is someone I’m going to keep very far away from, because they’re not only ok with Blonde’s bullying, but resenting Blue for responding to it with anything but shame.
Which, incidentally, is why I was very strongly ‘not like other girls’ in high school. I was weird as fuck, but I wasn’t like a bully–and because of interactions like this, most other girls who presented like that were coded as bullies in my mind.
actually, super uncharitable gut reaction is:
oh look, they’ve found a new way to ostracize us, and this time they’re claiming WE’RE the bullies.
I…can’t even read Blue as bullying? Like. At all???
Where do people even see…I don’t…I literally can’t wrap my head around that? I. What
……..as someone who’s been bullied their whole life, I’m with Blue here. A good response to an uncalled-for criticism meant only to hurt.
DarkestElemental616 