Where Worlds Intersect: How ‘White Girls’ Became ‘Basic’

“Calling all the basic b*tches” begins Youtube user and Internet sensation Lohanthony, twirling his leg and finally leaning into the camera to tell his audience “you’re basic.”

Lohanthony’s video was published in June 2012, and it’s the event that several people I interviewed pointed to as the entrance of the term ‘basic’ into mainstream lexicon— with mainstream being young, mainly white, teenage girls that comprise the majority of Lohanthony’s fanbase of 1,367,470 (on YouTube alone). But what is the ‘basic bitch’, or what does it mean to be ‘basic’?

In November, I emailed several student groups on campus, including suburban high and middle schoolers, the Institute of Politics’ Politics of Race and Ethnicity Group, the First-Year Urban Program, and the Asian American Women’s Association with a poll asking about attitudes members held about the intersection of the terms ‘basic’ and ‘white girl,’ as in the Common White Girl Twitter stereotype (see @CommonWhiteGirl, @CommonWhiteGrl, or @girlposts for more of an explanation). I found that 76.9% of those polled were familiar with the ‘Common White Girl’ accounts (the most famous of which, @girlposts, has 5.14 million followers). In addition, I found that a similar percentage, 73.8%, believed that though ‘white girl’ is not synonymous with ‘basic,’ ‘white girls’ are often ‘basic.’

 

90210, the CW

I grew up in suburban upstate New York in a predominantly white community (though I myself identify as AAPI) so I have become familiar with today’s use of the terms “basic” and “white girl” in terms of the community that I was in, in that the ‘basic’ girl is one who sips on her Starbucks vanilla bean frappuccino, uploads selfies to Instagram daily, and wears chestnut brown Ugg boots from October to March. I have been wondering how the term ‘white girl’, which denotes a stereotypical suburban teenager (Davies) who loves “Starbucks, Ugg boots, North Face Denali fleece jackets, and pumpkin spice lattes” (Davies) has become termed “basic” by teenagers and bloggers alike, as the term “basic” derives from the term “basic bitch” which emerged into African American culture in 2009. In this blogpost, I will discuss the appropriation of the term “basic”, along with how racialized, if at all, the term “white girl” is. In addition, I will also hope to shed light on how people of color have come to accept or reject this trope of a “white girl” and on what the roots of their attitudes on this issue are.

Part I: Some Basic Information on the Term ‘Basic’

Today, it’s difficult to post a picture of a Starbucks cup (red for the holiday season) without being charged as being ‘basic’ in the comment section, and it’s hard to wear Ugg boots with pride when you know that you’ll be derisively called ‘basic’ by your peers when you venture out to public. But the term ‘basic’ has origins far from this connotation, of the suburban world of Ugg boots, lattes, and Bath and Body Works 3 for $15 lotions. It is actually rooted, like many ‘trendy’ words, in African American culture.

The first mention of the term ‘basic’ online was on August 3, 2009 when YouTube user LilDuval posted the video “Basic Bitch” (LilDuval). In it, LilDuval exclaims “if you a black girl and your weave is red, green, purple, or blonde… yous a basic bitch,” and “if you go on a date with no money and expect him to pay for your food and he don’t, yous a basic bitch and you shoulda had a backup plan” among other scenarios that he deems “basic bitch” worthy. Writer Logan Anderson agrees, writing in the Louisiana State University Legacy Magazine that the term “basic bitch” was originally in the African American community an extension of the term “ratchet,” a “stereotypical lower class African American woman— someone who wore Rainbow clothing, lace front wigs, and drew on her eyebrows… a woman that a highly ranked, white, male Republican would derisively refer to as a ‘welfare queen'” (Anderson). It’s a far cry from what we, and Lohanthony, deem ‘basic’ today.

The timeline I created here further highlights the transformation of the term ‘basic’ in pop culture. Shortly after LilDuval’s video was posted, the term “basic bitch” was modified on Urban Dictionary to fit his context, and the term “basic bitch” was picked up by Tyga in his 2010 song “Hard in the Paint,” as he raps “don’t compare me to no basic bitch” (Tyga). Lil Wayne quickly followed Tyga later that year, rapping in “I Am Not a Human Being” that “I thank God that I am not basic” (Lil Wayne). Basic, in these two songs, has a definitively negative connotation in which it is, like Anderson writes, an adjective or stereotype that describes people of a lower social and economic class.

The turning point in the term ‘basic’ being used in the music industry is in the release of Kreayshawn’s song “Gucci Gucci” in May 2011 (Kreayshawn). The song’s repetitive hook states “Gucci Gucci, Louis Louis, Fendi Fendi, Prada/ the basic bitches wear that shit, so I don’t even bother,” making it seem that you don’t have to be poor to be ‘basic’; being ‘basic’ seems to be, in this song’s context, a crime of being unoriginal and following safe crowd trends in order to fit in, not of being poor. In addition, being ‘basic’ is no longer something that only women and men in the black community can be; Kreayshawn, or Natassia Gail Zolot, is a petite white woman who is appropriating black culture, and more pertinent to this conversation, black linguistics (Viera). Gucci Gucci has over 48 million hits on YouTube as of 2014, and it’s what many online sources point to as the beginning of the word ‘basic’ entering mainstream (read: white) lexicon, a sort of linguistic gentrification if you will. Being basic, one writer states, seems like a new phrase, but it really is “only new to one narrow part of our culture— white people” (Davies), reminiscent of say rock-n-roll to white audiences with the introduction of Elvis. By the transitive property, it seems like Kreayshawn is our Elvis in that she brought the term “basic bitch” to white consciousness.

Today, the fact that the term ‘basic’ originated from African American culture is virtually unknown, with a vast majority— 80.6%- of respondents stating that they do not associate the term ‘basic’ with African American culture (some respondents were more enthusiastic about this, saying “hell nah” and “I don’t [associate basic with African American culture] but unfortunately society does”). One respondent even wrote that “there definitely are basic people within the black community,” suggesting that there are people representative of today’s suburban white teenager-style basic in black culture and a lack of knowledge that the original ‘basic’ women were black.

Though the term ‘basic’ has been appropriated into describing someone who is completely different from the original connotation, it is still representative of someone who fits a certain basic (literally), generic stereotype.

Ms. Not-Right-Now

It’s interesting also to observe the dropping of the phrase “bitch” from the phrase “basic bitch,” as if it is making the phrase more age-appropriate for younger mostly white teenagers who have taken over the term. Nevertheless, the term ‘basic’ has come a long way from its original context to its current connotation.

Part II: Understanding Basic-ness Within the Context of Teenage Identity

In “The Disconnectionists,” Nathan Jurgenson discusses the idea that there’s a “conflict between the self as social performance and the self as authentic expression of one’s inner truth” and that there is a group of people advocating the unplugging from social media citing the fact that the Internet has “normalized… an unprecedented repression of the authentic self in favor of calculated avatar performance” (Jurgenson). Jurgenson and the Disconnectionists bring up an interesting point— has the “basic” identity evolved because it turns out that a lot of people of certain demographics do a lot of the same things, or has the fact that women tend to buy the same type of clothes or participate in similar activities not stem from online peer pressure? In other words, would Starbucks pumpkin spice lattes have gained as much prominence without the power of social media and the desire to ‘fit in’ by suburbanites? I hypothesize (as someone who has tasted the candle-like pumpkin spice latte) that no, they wouldn’t, and that peer pressure definitely has a role in the spread of what is ‘cool’ and not, and by extension, what ‘basic’ girls do to fit in (and counter-intuitively, this groupthink contributes to the defining of ‘basic’ identity). Ms. Not-Right-Now puts it best, defining ‘basic’ as “an uncanny ability to aspire to mediocrity” (Ms. Not-Right-Now), and one woman who states that she’s “proud to be a basic bitch” wrote that “basic means according to the Internet: a white girl who likes cliché things that ‘every other white girl’ likes,” making it seem like the term has evolved heavily because of the fact that social media has made it possible for everyone to know what people are caring about in all aspects of life, be it activities, food, or sartorial choices (Booth).

Researcher Danah Boyd writes in it’s complicated that American teens use social media in a way that reflects existing problems in society and reinforces their deep-seated beliefs, and that teens bring their “values and attitudes, hopes and prejudices” online with them (Boyd 160). She additionally writes that social divisions remain salient online, and that “class politics intertwine with race” (Boyd 160), which makes understanding why teens may call each other or another group of teens ‘basic’; it’s an expression of helping classify the ‘other,’ just like they do in the cafeteria. Calling out a group of stereotypically middle and upper class girls for the way they dress or act is nothing new and is a normal expression of us-vs-them mentality or teenage angst, and a more dated term might be something like ‘prep’ in the early 2000s for the Abercrombie-wearing set. Teens calling each other ‘basic’ is just making fun or poking fun at being too “normal” or unoriginal, and many embrace the term. It’s nothing radical or new, except for the appropriation of African American culture that’s intrinsically part of the phrase (alongside white suburban teenage girls calling their hair ‘ratchet’ after a day of not straightening it).

I think that this is supported strongly by the fact that the essence of being ‘basic’ varies by regional tastes and by age; for instance, Jezebel ran a feature called “The United States of Basic Bitches” which details the “Chicago Trixie Basic,” “Dallas Basic,” “Manhattan Basic,” and “San Francisco Basic” along with others, showing that being basic, or generic, varies by regional taste and is not static (Ryan).

Part III: White Girl- Racist or Classist Caricature?

From what we have explored so far, it seems that ‘basic’ now describes the quintessential American ‘white girl’—but who is she?

I’ve found online the terms are often lumped together, like in the Buzzfeed headline “16 Questions All Basic White Girls Never Knew They Needed to Answer” or “25 Things All Basic White Girls Do During the Fall,” so to understand these terms a little bit better, I’ve created a chart to compare things that ‘basic’ girls and ‘white girls’ like and do in order to draw a comparison.

(Walker, Marshall, Hudspeth)

It’s easy to see that there are a lot of similarities between the two groups, as denoted by pink asterisks. I would like to note that this list is not comprehensive and is taken from only three articles describing the characteristics of ‘white girls’ and ‘basic’ girls.

I hope that this chart shows that race is not as big of a factor in the term ‘white girl’ as one would expect, as I did not see anything in either columns that had anything to do with race. It seems more that the two stereotypes and tropes are instead based in consumerism (brands like Ugg, North Face, Victoria’s Secret, and Starbucks are named, as well as the website Pinterest which allows for users to compile virtual shopping lists of things they would like, recipes they would like to create, wedding ideas, or things of that nature). This is supported by my poll data, which found that 68.75% of respondents stated that not all ‘white girls’ are white, and as one responder put it, “the reference to a ‘white girl’ is anyone whose behavior corresponds to the white girl stigma.”

However, in a departure from my findings, I do think that there is some sort of racial component inherent in the ‘white girl’ trope; it would be considered racist to use a similar trope for people of color (ex. There aren’t articles out there derailing black girls or Asian girls). There is some sort of element of privilege inherent in the fact that white boys and girls can use the trope ‘white girl’ to make fun of each other, because, as one young woman interviewed in Why are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria puts it, “I’m just normal!” (Tatum 93).

Tatum writes that adolescence is when race becomes salient, as evidenced by what she called the “birthday party effect” in which parties for young kids are often as diverse as the classrooms are, but parties as students get older at puberty are often segregated by race (Tatum 57). My hypothesis that the trope of a ‘white girl’ is based in this notion that adolescence is an age where race becomes salient; seeing the similarities between ‘white girls’ who are usually materialistic middle and upper-middle class girls and the stereotype of Jewish American Princesses (JAPs), why has one taken off on a storm throughout all forms of social media, whereas the other, JAP, has not (Betches Love This)?

Though the term JAP is still used by Jewish American teens, it is not salient enough for the greater public to take on to make fun of or poke fun at. One of the students I interviewed, Sam, stated, “You can call a non-white person a ‘white girl,’ but I would not call one of my non-Jewish friends a ‘JAP.’”

I wanted to know how women of color felt about the term ‘white girl,’ and if teens felt that the term is applicable to people who are not white. 68.75% of my respondents said that not all ‘white girls’ are white, and a similar percentage, 65.6% felt that you could call someone who isn’t white a ‘white girl.’ This would counter my theory that whiteness, or race in general, is salient in this demographic that is using the term ‘white girl’ interchangeably with ‘basic.’

On the other hand, other I learned that 51% of women of color I interviewed felt that they could identify with the term ‘white girl,’ while 49% of them felt that they could not because they are not white. I also asked respondents how they would feel about getting called a ‘white girl,’ if they were women of color, and I got a wide array of responses. Some were neutral on the subject, saying things like “offended” or “okay with it because they are obviously joking,” but I had a lot more negative responses (this was an optional question, so this could be biased in that people with stronger feelings left responses and those who were more lukewarm on the subject skipped it). These ranged from “offended because that means I’m a materialistic snob” and “it plays off a stereotype of being a middle/upper-middle class white girl” to “it hurts because when black women are called and compared to white girls, it is just another reminder of how much this country rejects black womanhood” and “as a person of color, I’m offended when someone calls me a ‘white girl’ and goes on to suggest that I’m denying my own race by ‘acting too white.’”

The negative responses I received about how women of color would feel about being called ‘white girls’ leads me to believe that for the greater community at large, being a ‘white girl’ does not depend solely on race, but for women and people of color, being called a ‘white girl’ is more than being told you’re materialistic, representative of a certain lifestyle/socioeconomic background, or as one person wrote, “a stereotypical/characteristic less intelligent, usually young Caucasian female who follows popular trends and is caught up in inconsequential details.” It’s like being told that you are conforming too much into the white majority (like being called an ‘Oreo’ or a ‘banana’).

One woman interviewed even said that she “automatically feels as if that’s degrading because ‘white girl’ is linked to ‘being basic,’” noting the negative connotation basic-ness has to women of color as well. Being basic, it seems, is something that no one wants tied to his or her identity, regardless of race and class.

Part IV: Conclusion

I wanted to learn more about the face of the ‘white girl’ movement by conversing with someone who is the purveyor of the ‘white girl’ code, namely, one of the owners of the many Common White Girl Twitter accounts. Though I reached out to five of them (the ones that I could find had business emails in their Twitter biographies), I only received answers from two of them, one of which asked me to text him/her (which I felt a bit too uncomfortable doing). The one Tweeter that I was able to talk to stated that s/he believes that ‘basic’ and ‘white girl’ are the same thing, but this is not the opinion of everyone, and wrote that s/he felt that ‘white girl’ is a class-based term, an opinion that many of my poll respondents had held. I think that the most interesting things that I learned from corresponding with the Tweeter was that the account follows many women of color, and that most of the Common White Girl’s followers are people of color.

One of the most famous Common White Girl accounts. The accounts almost all include this picture of pre-transformation Cinderella as the avatar.

 As a woman of color, I agree with one of my respondents in that though I would not feel great about being called a ‘white girl,’ I would still feel like it would make sense if I was carrying a Starbucks cup, as the phrase has become deracialized in some circles to the point in that it’s a meaningless stereotype, akin to the word ‘prep.’ However, I do hold issues with being called ‘basic,’ as I still feel like it is an appropriation of black culture even if its connotation today is a complete departure from its past. 

At the same time, it seems that reading too far into these stereotypes is in and of itself ‘basic’, as Jezebel writer Kara Brown wrote, “overanalyzing basic is the most basic move of all” (Brown). As one of my respondents put it, “being ‘basic’ or being a ‘white girl’ is basically like being called a ‘dumb blonde.’ Not all blondes are dumb, and there are certainly people who don’t have blonde hair that could be the butt of a blonde joke.”

(Author’s Note: I would like to note that my statistics are up for consideration seeing that I did not have a randomized sample size nor was the number of women of color and white women equal or controlled in any way. I used a very informal survey.)

 Works Cited

The Twitter Purge and the Fappening: How Women are Blamed for the Invasion of their own Privacy

The concept of ‘revenge porn,’ defined by the Harvard Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Law Review as “the public online posting of nude or sexually explicit pictures of a person, often with attached identifying information or derogatory comments” has come to public consciousness in the wake of two major events in 2014: the “Twitter Purge” in July and November and the “Fappening,” a colloquial term for the leak of hundreds of nude pictures of celebrities in September (Harvard Civil Rights- Civil Liberties Law Review). However, the practice has been around for a while, with the most prominent ‘revenge porn’ website, Hunter Moore’s “Is Anyone Up,” being created in 2010. “Is Anyone Up,” until its closing in 2012, was a forum-style website where posters were encouraged to shame their ex-lovers publicly by posting their nude pictures and contact information (Harvard Civil Rights- Civil Liberties Law Review). Though the site was not a household name, the practice of ‘sexting,’ or the texting of provocative and sexually explicit pictures to others, has apparently been a mainstay for years, and the Fappening and Twitter Purge made people understand that it was more widespread than most people expected, for better and for worse, and more troubling is the fact that sexting has trickled down into practice in the preteen and teenage arena, with a recent study finding that 18% of teenagers have sent a nude picture to a partner (Parkinson).

Sexting may not have become a problem if it wasn’t for the fact that partners inevitably break up. In moments of anger, many scorned partners turn to the Internet to shame their partners, and these partners whose pictures are posted online are overwhelmingly—90%-female (End Revenge Porn). With these statistics, it is easy to see that revenge porn is a gendered crime, and is more a manifestation of society’s ongoing harassment of women (ex. Street cat calling and victim blame in college rape cases) than a completely new adopted belief that is suddenly adopted when one goes online (Harvard Civil Rights- Civil Liberties Law Review, Nutting). And revenge porn is not just an online issue—the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative has found that 49% of women who have been exposed in revenge porn have been harassed and stalked both online and offline by those who had seen their pictures (End Revenge Porn).

Embedded from End Revenge Porn

The “Twitter Purge,” a burst of revenge porn pictures of women that were posted on a dedicated accounts created by a teenager in California to purge, or expose, ‘thots,’ a degrading slang term towards women, began in mid-July (Parkinson). It is interesting to note that the “Twitter Purge” began only a week after a teenage girl named Jada Sparks became a trending topic on Twitter as boys from a party she was at raped her then mocked her online by posting pictures of her in an unconscious and partially clothed state (Parkinson). The timing of the purge coincided with the release of The Purge: Anarchy, the sequel to the first The Purge movie, and the reincarnation of the Twitter Purge occurred in November when the media hyped the DVD release (Wikipedia). What is interesting about the Twitter Purge is that even when the original Purge accounts that were created by the Californian teen were deleted by Twitter, individual tweeters continued to use the hashtag #twitterpurge in order to shame their ex-girlfriends and women that had trusted them enough to send them nude or semi-nude photos.

The spike of tweets containing the hashtag #TwitterPurge is shown to have increased dramatically on the days surrounding the release of The Purge: Anarchy DVD.  

Two months after the first Twitter Purge, the phenomenon was followed by an even more startling and more sensational story when the nude, personal photos of hundreds of female celebrities were posted online onto a forum site called 4chan, with the photos being stolen through a breach in security in the Apple iCloud which instantly stores photos taken on iPhones (Worland). Though the public had almost become used to the leaking of private photos because of the Twitter Purge, the victim blame game was even stronger than before as people tweeted ‘advice’ to celebrities that was patronizing and misogynistic as they blamed those in the pictures, not the people who had hacked into the iCloud to steal them and post them publicly. The overwhelming voice of people giving advice included things like “don’t take nude selfies,” but this was problematic as it was only targeted towards women, not the men who had hacked the system (Bilton, Dewey). Female reporters and feminists rallied towards the cause, stating that those who told women to ‘not take nude pictures’ were doing the equivalent of telling women to not dress a certain way when going outside, going to a party, or even telling women that rape is their fault (Dewey).

A stereotypical tweet telling women what to do in order to avoid getting their pictures posted online without their consent, which doesn’t even touch the bigger problem of people posting their pictures.

Many men and women tweeted about the Twitter Purge and the “Fappening” saying that women should not sext at all in order to protect themselves from the possibility of a leak by someone they know (as in revenge porn) or someone they don’t even know (as in the celebrity nude leak), but this is difficult advice whe the practice has become embedded into the social norm of teenagers. Ironically, a study by Lippman and Campbell has found that girls are “no more likely than boys to sext” but “more likely to experience pressure to do so, particularly from boys” (Lippman and Campbell). However, girls are the ones who are exposed after a rough break-up, and are the ones who are branded with terms like “prude” if they are not willing to send sexts to love interests and “sluts” if they send them too willingly (Lippman and Campbell). In addition, the way that girls are treated when their photos are put online against their will is problematic as police officers say things like “they victimized themselves” (Rossin).

The issue of revenge porn, sexting, the Fappening, and the Twitter Purge all coalesce into one big question: how far is too far when the First Amendment is concerned (Kim)? How far are we willing to push the boundary of free speech when it is hurtful and detrimental to women online? Barlow’s 1996 “A Cyberspace Independence Declaration” seems eerie as it echoes the attitude of 4chan users who exposed celebrities’ personal pictures without caring about the government’s hand, as it states “governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. You have neither solicited nor received ours” (Barlow). In addition, Barlow states that governments do not “possess any methods of enforcement [Internet users] have true reason to fear,” which is quite true in that due to the international nature of the Internet, what is outlawed in one state may be allowed in another, as not all states have anti-revenge porn laws in effect yet (Barlow, Kim).

There is no clear solution to this problem, as it again is just a technological manifestation of the way that women are treated in our society September (Harvard Civil Rights- Civil Liberties Law Review). The fact that this problem is not just one online but that society has as a whole is highlighted by the case in which several police officers in California were found to be stealing and forwarding nude pictures from phones of people arrested or stopped for things like speeding to their own phones in order to collect nude photos of women as a game within the police force (Steigerwald). When even the police is contributing to the problem, it seems that it is a lost cause for women everywhere to be given dignity in expressing their sexuality with peace of mind.

Works Cited

Barlow, John. A Cyberspace Independence Declaration. 9 Feb. 1996. E-Mail.

Bilton, Nick (NickBilton). “Put together a list of tips for celebs after latest leaks:1. Don’t take nude selfies 2. Don’t take use selfies 3. Don’t take nude selfies” 1 September 2014, 5:31 p.m. Tweet.

Dewey, Caitlin. “This Is Why ‘not Taking Nude Selfies’ Is Not the Solution to the Internet’s Nude-Photo Hacking Scandal.” Washington Post : September 2, 2014. Print.

Kim, Anne. “Addressing Celebrity Nude Photo Leaks and Revenge Porn: The First Amendment Question.” Roll Call. N.p., 7 Nov. 2014. Web.

“Law and Revenge Porn.” Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review. N.p., n.d. Web.

Lippman, Julia, and Scott Campbell. “Damned If You Do, Damned If You Don’t…If You’re a Girl: Relational and Normative Contexts of Adolescent Sexting in the United States.” Children and Media (2013): 371–386. Print.

Nutting, Alice. “Revenge Porn Is Vile Symptom of Modern Misogyny — It’s about Time We Had a Protection Law.” The Independent 16 Nov. 2014. Web.

Parkinson, Hannah. “Twitter Trend Based on The Purge Films Exposes Horror of Revenge Porn.” The Guardian 21 July 2014. Web.

“Revenge Porn By the Numbers.” End Revenge Porn. N.p., 3 Jan. 2014. Web.

Rosin, Hannah. “Why Kids Sext.” The Atlantic 14 Oct. 2014. Web.

Steigerwald, Lucy. “California Officers Steal Suspects’ Nude Photos as a ‘Game.’” N.p., 27 Oct. 2014. Web.

“The Purge: Anarchy.” Wikipedia. N.p., n.d. Web.

“Tweets per Day: Twitterpurge October 17- November 16.” Topsy. N.p., n.d. Web.

Worland, Justin. “How That Massive Celebrity Hack Might Have Happened.” Time Magazine 1 Sept. 2014. Web.

The Common White Girl: Classist or Racist Caricature?

Earlier this month, I had my “white girl card officially revoked” by a friend on Twitter.

The joke was that I had spelled “frappuchino” incorrectly, which is an infamous overpriced drink sold at Starbucks (a place that one of my teachers in high school joked was where people who “don’t like the taste of coffee drink fake coffee,” namely the sugar-laden frappuchinos) that girls that fall under this “common white girl” stereotype are said to enjoy by independent Twitter accounts and Urban Dictionary, which states that a “common white girl” is “any white girl in America who is obsessed with any of the following: Leggings, Uggs, Starbucks, Autumn, iPhones, Instagram, Twitter, Selfies, or the movie Mean Girls.” (Urban Dictionary). Here’s a video that has girls acting out other things that “common white girls” are known to say on a regular basis:

As a person of color, I have never thought twice about the fact that people group me into this stereotype that is the “common white girl” that is documented by various Twitter accounts that originated from 2009 to 2010 (according to their Twitter profiles), the most famous of which I have included here:

I’m not sure how or when I began to identify as a “common white girl” myself, or if I began to identify as one because the label was thrusted upon me by my suburban middle-class peers in high school. This caricature of the average white girl was concocted on Twitter and Tumblr, where teenagers lurked, and is not mentioned by media in any way or form nor does it have its own Wikipedia article. To me, the idea of the “common white girl” was that she was not race-based, as the word ‘white’ in her name suggests, but she is just a middle and upper middle-class girl of any race who enjoys these pleasures that Urban Dictionary describes.

Scrolling down the Urban Dictionary “common white girl” listings, I found that a second definition fit my idea of a “common white girl” better, as it stated that the “common white girl” is “any girl, generally of any race or ethnicity, who are obssed with the following: iPhones/iPads, Fall, Leggings/Nike pants, Bath and Body works candles, Bath and Body Works soap, Target bikinis, Sports bras…” and the list goes on (Urban Dictionary). I have to admit, I enjoy all of these things that both definitions include, and I guess by the second definition that I am indeed a “common white girl”—albeit one who has apparently had her “white girl card” evoked.

This humorous anecdote and topic reminded me of Danah Boyd’s section in It’s Complicated where she states that “How American teens use social media reflects existing problems in society and reinforces deep-seated beliefs” (Boyd 159). In this section entitled “Inequality,” Boyd writes about how teens’ beliefs about race and class offline are brought into their online worlds. She goes on to state that “class politics intertwine with race, adding another dimension to existing social divisions,” making me wonder whether the idea of the “common white girl” is drawn along racial or class lines (Boyd 163).

My research project will thus be one in which I look at how teens on Twitter use the term “common white girl” or “white girl” and figure out if the term is one that is based on race or if it is based on economic class. I will also look to find other caricatures and stereotypical phrases like “common white girl” that may describe other racial or class groups regardless of gender (however, I will not be looking at the spin-offs of “common white girl” that include “common black girl,” “common Asian girl,” and “common Hispanic girl” that are also nested underneath the search term “common white girl” on Twitter). I’m interested in seeing if teens self-segregate (a term that Boyd mentions that psychologist Beverly Tatum used in her book Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?) online by class or by race, and if the joke accounts and figures that they make follow suit (Boyd 166).

Additionally, I would like to explore this topic further in light of the Jurgenson essay we read last week (“The Disconnectionists”). In his essay, Jurgenson states that we are in the “golden age of personal authenticity” no more, which makes me wonder if girls who do not fit the archetypical “common white girl” ideal (either because they do not identify as white or are not middle class) try to conform to this stereotype in order to fit in with their peers at school or online (Jurgenson). Jurgenson writes that people are “generally uncomfortable admitting that who they are might be partly, or perhaps deeply, structured and performed” makes me question the authenticity of the enjoyment of “common white girls” with things that Urban Dictionary suggests that they enjoy, and that is what I will explore as well (Jurgenson).

I feel like the best way for me to research this topic and publish my findings will be in a series of recorded interviews in conjunction to a broader research paper/blog-style publication that I will create on medium.com. I’m not sure if I will keep the recorded interviews and publish them (say on radiolab.org as podcasts that I can embed into my medium.com article) but I would like to record my interviews to be able to have a more personal feel. I think that I will choose my subjects at Harvard who I can interview during term-time as well as younger teenagers who I will interview in the middle-class suburbs that I live in at home during Thanksgiving break. For my interviews at Harvard, I think that I will ask the e-mail lists of race/ethnicity-based groups of women (ex. Fuerza Latina and Asian-American Women’s Association) if there are any members who are in these groups (and are presumably not people who identify as white) who would like to be interviewed. I would like to have my initial interviews on campus done by October 29, but will conduct additional interviews in my hometown in the week of November 29.

Other research I will do will be primarily on Twitter, analyzing publically accessible tweets to search for other racial/economic stereotypical caricatures that teens perpetrate as well as try to figure out where the bulk of the “common white girl” stereotype—and other stereotypes I will hopefully encounter- come from. I’ll also look for evidence on Instagram, Tumblr, and Vine, as these are other social media platforms that younger teens are gravitating towards. I will collect these Tweets/pictures/short videos by screenshotting them and saving the hyperlinks to them, and analyze them piece by piece (and make subcategories within my findings). This will be done during the month of November as well so that I have the last week of November and the first week of December to compile my findings. I will then create the medium.com post around the time of December 4-9.

Though I was unable to find any scholarly work on this topic, I hope to be able to find some through Jstor or searches on Google Scholar and add my findings to the knowledge of teen Internet use that Boyd really pioneered in “It’s Complicated.”

Boyd, Danah. It’s Complicated. Yale University Press, 2014.

“Common White Girl Screenshot.” 2014. JPG file. https://twitter.com/girlposts

Common White Girl. Perf. Thatsojack. YouTube, 2013. YouTube.

 

“Common White Girl.” Urban Dictionary. Urban Dictionary, n.d. http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=common%20white%20girl.

Jurgenson, Nathan. “The Disconnectionists.” The New Inquiry, November 20, 2013. http://thenewinquiry.com/essays/the-disconnectionists/.

Reading Summary on Readings for Tuesday, October 14

Introduction

This week’s readings cover a wide range of topics: two papers from the Race and the Internet book deal with the accessibility of the Internet and its communities to people of different races (especially on Native American reservations throughout the US), the voice of minority writers and journalists online, in print, on the radio, and on TV, while another deals with how people are using YouTube to trace their origins alongside an interested audience, and the last deals with the problematic nature of DNA databases. In addition, the article from The New Inquiry was quite relatable to me, as I often wonder about the discrepancies between “Facebook me,” “Tumblr me,” “Twiter me,” “Instagram me,” and “IRL me.”

Sandvig’s “Connection at Ewiiaapaayp Mountain: Indigenous Internet Infrastructure”

Sandvig’s paper dealt with the Tribal Digital Village, which was a network that “provides Internet access to remote indigenous communities in Southern California,” along with research on how indigenous people in America are marginalized in terms of Internet access because of the lack of infrastructure to support it on reservations (Sandvig 192). What I found most troubling was the fact that though it was inspiring that complete amateurs were able to get the Internet up and running and provide the service for thousands of people in the San Diego area, they did this not because of choice but because of necessity—big companies were not willing to come into their uncharted territory on reservations, and one of TDV’s members even stated that he would “rather have had enough money to ‘just hire someone’” or have been able to have a “more normal system… provided by a more usual Internet provider (Sandvig 192).

I was troubled not only about the fact that Native Americans are unable to access the Internet with as much ease as the rest of America, as in 2010, the FCC estimated that 65% percent of American households had Internet in their homes, and 65% of Native American households had basic telephone service (Sandvig 169). The fact that as a result, Native American households can’t even utilize dial-up Internet that was mainstream over a decade ago in the early 2000s is infuriating to me, as this closes out a large number of voices from being able to share their experiences online, and even when they want to use the Internet, the government won’t subsidize the costs unless they are using it for “useful” purposes, not games and social media like the rest of America uses Internet for (Sandvig 183).

I found it interesting that Sandvig talked about the way that many people on Native American reservations are “appropriating” technology for their purposes, like the example of a man who used the Internet in order to text message his friends because there was no cell phone service in his area. I have always thought about the term “appropriation,” especially in connotation with Native Americans, in a negative way (think Urban Outfitters and their ‘Navajo’ items which they made a trend). However, appropriation in this sense seemed like a necessity, not a conscious—and sometimes even subconscious- sartorial choice. I never knew that the definition of appropriation was to “possess [technology] without permission,” in other words, using technology that was “intended to do one thing [and] forcefully [re-making] it in order to do something else, just as old cellular telephone towers… car batteries and more were re-made to provide Internet service by TDV” (Sandvig 191).

Above are four of the many “Navajo” items that Urban Outfitters sold (clockwise from top left: Navajo Hipster Panty, Navajo Nations Crew Pullover,Navajo Sock, andTechno Navajo Quilt Oversized Crop Tee)  for quite some time, to the fury of the Native American community and their allies (the blog post that I found these pictures from can be found here and is an interesting blog apart from just this post itself; another good resource I found that talks about the headdress trend can be found here). It is appalling to me that hallmarks of a culture are stripped of its importance and plastered onto a shirt or mass-marketed piece of underwear, and I am quite interested in why—and how- these cultural appropriation “trends” come about. I would like to pose the question after reading the Sandvig article- is there such thing as “good” appropriation? My [wary] answer is no; I personally think that if Native Americans and their physical communities were given as much attention as the rest of America, the residents would not have to appropriate as such a drastic measure in the first place to use such simple technology as the Internet or SMS texting.

Wilson and Costanza-Clark’s “New Voices on the Net? The Digital Journalism Divide and the Costs of Network Exclusion”

This paper deals with diversity in the media today with a central focus on how people assume that because Obama was elected in 2008 to the US presidency, that it has entered “a new, ‘post-racial era’” but that this is not true because “race, class, and gender all continue to unjustly structure Americans’ opportunities in every sphere of life” (Wilson and Costanza-Chock 246). It’s eye opening to notice that “whites… own 90% of US businesses” even when the population is approximately 1/3 minority (Wilson and Costanza-Chock 246). In addition, it’s depressing to note that minority employment in print journalism is only at 13.5% at the time of publication (Wilson and Costanza-Chock 249). The lack of a voice for people of color in print publications is disparaging because “mass market newspapers in the United States have never given fair, accurate, or proportional coverage to people of color and their communities” (Wilson and Costanza-Chock 248), and I agree that especially in light of the events in Ferguson at the present time, there is still a lack of reporting done by African-American reporters from the area (most reporters seem to be from outside the area, such as reporters that are writing for The New York Times and Mic.com). Apparently, TV stations and public radio have better employee diversity than newspapers, which I found to be interesting because this was the opposite of my initial hypothesis; I thought that because print journalism has a sense of anonymity (you can choose to be anonymous and your name is often ambiguous in your race and sometimes even your gender) while on TV one’s face (and assumed race) is shown, that people of color would be more well-represented in print than on TV.

Another theme that Wilson and Costanza-Chock touch upon is the fact that there is this disparity in who gets Internet access and who is talking/getting their opinion heard on the Internet. They write about Metcalfe’s Law which states that “as more people join a network, the value to the network increases exponentially” (Wilson and Costanza-Chock 257) and that “when only a minority of the population is not in the network, the costs of exclusion rise dramatically” (Wilson and Costanza-Chock 259). This reminded me of how a huge number of Americans and facets of American livelihood (like school websites and college applications) are online yet many Native American reservations do not have access to the Internet, as Sandvig wrote earlier in the book, and I enjoyed how the two readings played off each other in that way.

Nelson and Hwang’s “Roots and Revelation: Genetic Ancestry Testing and the YouTube Generation” 

Nelson writes about the use of video-sharing on YouTube to create a community that supports each other while learning about users’ ancestries, particularly in the African-American community. The premise behind genealogy is simple, and I enjoyed the phrase that “genealogy is a necessity of knowing who you are and everything you hope to be” (Nelson and Hwang 273). This made me believe that being able to know who your ancestors are should be a basic and unalienable right, and that it’s remarkable how far technology has come in creating a space where users can talk about their experiences in finding out their roots.

It’s interesting that they mention that social networking sites, or SNSs, “encourage a sense of proximity between broadcasters and commenters… partly achieved through filming technique and style: close-angle views and sotto voce tones are employed on roots revelations that approximate the “confessional” interludes… these videos create intimacy despite the fact that they can be grainy and poorly lit” (Nelson and Hwang 282). I definitely agree that the homemade quality of videos on YouTube is one of the reasons that they seem so relatable and why they may help foster this community of people looing for their ancestry online. This deeply contrasted with the high-quality, well-lit, professional-looking video portfolio that comprises the “Whiteness Project,” which was actually filmed in Buffalo, New York where I’ve lived the past seven years very recently. I had stumbled upon this week and was outraged about. The project interviews several white people about their experiences with their “whiteness” and how they feel about their ancestry; the conversation may be needed in public dialogue but some of the interviewees seemed to be making ridiculous demands. For instance, Chris states that “as a white person, I wish I had that feeling of being… of being white but I don’t… the pride and the culture of being white just isn’t there” (Whiteness Project: Chris),  which touches on his wish for a community but his community seems to be that of “real life” and not online, a dichotomy that is seen not only in the YouTube genealogy community but also in the Jurgenson reading where the author talks about the discrepancies between “real life” and “online.

Duster’s “The Combustible Intersection”

It’s almost common knowledge that DNA testing is supposedly a good thing because it makes catching culprits easier when it comes to crimes like murder and rape. However, Duster argues that DNA collection can be a bad thing, because besides the first type of collection at crime scenes, there is this second type of data collection from “persons who are known to the police, mainly because they have been convicted of a crime,” an idea that seems okay except when facing the reality that databases are often racialized and known persons to the police are overwhelmingly people of color (Duster 313, Duster 317). The Duster reading really highlights how the criminal justice system, and particularly the collection of DNA, is heavily skewed and racialized, making it easier for people of color to be convicted of crimes because their DNA is often stored on these DNA databases more often than white people who were not “known suspects” who had their DNA samples taken from them before they become suspects to crimes.

Jurgenson, “The Disconnectionists”

I found this reading to be the most amusing because it’s the most applicable to my daily life, especially in the idea that we are no longer in the age of “personal authenticity,” as evidenced by this man’s tweet:

@Swarthyvillain is talking about a phenomenon that is one of the biggest jokes in our generation: the “common white girl,” a caricature described on Twitter under the #commonwhitegirl hashtag as a girl (that doesn’t necessarily have to be white), that is often middle-class, sips a Starbucks frappuccino (or pumpkin spice latte in the fall months), loves to wear leggings, and says “I can’t even” when she is at a loss for words.

I have to agree that I, too, am afraid that my personality has become too similar to the “common white girl” because of this idea that “social media surely changes identity performance” (Jurgenson). I honestly do wonder if my affinity for frappuccinos is because they are mainstream or because I genuinely like them. This idea that there is a conflict between my “self as social performance” and my “self as authentic expression of one’s inner truth” (Jurgenson) is something that I relate to completely; being completely overdosed by social media and sleeping next to my iPhone every night, my personality and interests have regrettably been shaped by trends I see on Facebook and Twitter. Jurgenson writes about how being “true to yourself” is now the motto, but what is “yourself” when you realize that you are just like all of these other “common white girls” online? I can’t even.

Jurgenson’s ironic laugh about the fact that there is even an internet fad and viral video (how is it viral if people are apparently sobering up and putting down their phones after watchin it?!) that is telling people to put down their phones resonated with me as well, as I remembered this picture I took of my friends’ cellphones while out at a dinner earlier this year because we decided that whoever touched their phone before their meal was over has to pay the tab (embarrassingly, one of my friends did reach for his phone, saying that he had to call his mom).

Conclusion

This week’s reading was very applicable to things that I’ve seen on Facebook and Twitter lately as well as making issues that I had not realized before (especially about the lack of Internet access on Native American reservations) clear to me. I am now considering making my final project for this course on the [lack of] ability to connect to the mainstream American public on these resservations, physically (because of distance to major cities) and digitally.

Question 1: Inspired by page 249 of the Wilson and Costanza-Chock reading; the reading notes that 13.5% of print journalists are people of color—what do you think the figure is at Harvard (at the Crimson, Lampoon, Manifesta, the Independent, and other publications), and do you think this figure varies within each publication? Do you think that if this figure is higher or lower, the reason minorities gravitate toward/away from print journalism is because they are afraid they won’t be heard or because they are encouraged to join? (I personally believe that the number of minorities on the staff of the Crimson may be a little higher than the national statistic, but not much more, which would be interesting because of the high minority presence at Harvard; I am just saying this at the top of my head because I have never seen any statistics about the role of race in clubs and activities at Harvard and this figure I’ve thought of only comes from my limited experience while comping the Crimson).

Question 2: In response to Nelson and Hwang; Why is it that people of color can uncontroversially express their desire to understand their ethnicity, background, and ancestry and have a community that supports them, while people of the white majority looking to do so (see the “Whiteness Project” I linked to above) are met with much controversy? Is it a right for only minorities to publicly express their desire to understand their roots? (The “Whiteness Project,” while seemingly in bad taste with some of the interviewees saying very ridiculous things that are not culturally sensitive at all, such as Jason stating that he feels that slavery is too far in the past (he says something along the lines of “you don’t know your great-great grandmother who suffered through slavery, it’s far removed from your experience today”) that African Americans keep playing it up in order to get minority privileges that he isn’t afforded as a white person, does bring up this question and I am not sure how I feel about it.)

Question 3: In response to Duster; should everyone’s DNA be sampled to reduce this skewing of DNA sampling based on race, or would that be a violation of the fourth amendment? If it is a violation of the fourth amendment, why is it okay that on these DNA databases, the people indexed are disproportionally people of color? (I would say yes that if everyone is indexed, this would be a lot less prejudiced of a system; however, I understand that this is a privacy issue and DNA information could be used against you—ex. If you have the gene for a fatal disease, an employer may not hire you).

Works Cited

âpihtawikosisân. “An Open Letter to Non-Natives in Headdresses.” Âpihtawikosisân, n.d. http://apihtawikosisan.com/hall-of-shame/an-open-letter-to-non-natives-in-headdresses/.

“Chris.” Whiteness Project, 2014. http://www.whitenessproject.org/checkbox/chris.

Duster, Troy. “The Combustible Intersection: Genomics, Forensics, and Race.” In Race After the Internet, 310–27. Routledge, 2012.

Jurgenson, Nathan. “The Disconnectionists.” Http://thenewinquiry.com/essays/the-disconnectionists/. The New Inquiry, November 13, 2013.

Nelson, Alondra, and Jeong Won Hwang. “Roots and Revelation: Genetic Ancestry Testing and the YouTube Generation.” In Race After the Internet, 271–90. Routledge, 2012.

Sandvig, Christian. “Connection at Ewiiaapaayp Mountain: Indigenous Internet Infrastructure.” In Race After the Internet, 168–202. Routledge, 2012.

Takeman, Buzzfeed. “Tweet.” Twitter. Swarthyvillain, September 14, 2014. https://twitter.com/swarthyvillain/status/511288311496065025?refsrc=email.

“Urban Outfitters Is Obsessed with Navajos.” Blog. Native Appropriations, September 23, 2011. http://nativeappropriations.com/2011/09/urban-outfitters-is-obsessed-with-navajos.html.

Wilson, Ernest J., and Sasha Costanza-Chock. “New Voices on the Net? The Digital Journalism Divide and the Costs of Network Exclusion.” In Race After the Internet, 246–68. Routledge, 2012.

 

Neopets: My Catalyst

I remember defacing a computer we had when I was really young, most likely in the late 1990s, a huge cubed desktop computer that I stuck a seahorse window decoration on. I wasn’t the one using the computer at the time—my dad was using it to type up his doctoral research and needless to say he wasn’t that amused.

The first instances that I can remember using a computer at home are when typing things I wrote like stories and adding them to dozens of floppy discs (I’m very curious to see what’s on the discs. I have them saved up in the basement but seeing that Apple Macbook Airs don’t even have a CD hole anymore, it’s very rare for computers today don’t really have a floppy disk hole). At school, from first grade to fifth grade, I was in a typing class where we would have to use the same program every single year (I would quickly beat the 26 levels of the program, Type to Learn 3, in later years seeing that I would remember everything from the last year). As a result, I grew to type very quickly and am known among my friends as the go-to person for lecture notes because I have an uncanny ability to type every word the professor says without breaking a sweat.

A walkthrough of the startup screen of Type to Learn 3, a game I was forced to play every year of elementary school. I have so many bad memories having to re-sign up every year and realize that I would have to start the program over.

I think that I began really using the computer to utilize the internet around third or fourth grade, mainly to play Neopets, which I guess was not only a game but a sort of kids’ social media-style site; I say this because not only did I enjoy playing games and racking up the virtual currency (neopoints) but I spent a lot of time networking with people on chatrooms (neoboards) and learning how to html code a crude version of a website. This first foray into html coding was integral for my later blogging and Internet use as I learned the basics (how to create paragraphs, margins, change the font or text color, create centered text, etc.) at this time. I think it’s quite funny when I look back on it that I spent so much time on this site because to go on the Internet we were still using Netzero’s dial-up service so my mom would get annoyed if she was waiting for a call. I also have a lot of nostalgia about learning about the “I’m Feeling Lucky” button on Google because I would type neopets.com into the Google search box and click the “I’m Feeling Lucky” button instead of typing it directly into my browser.

It took a lot of time and brainpower, but I finally remembered the name of my Neopet. Here’s her pitiful profile. She seems very undernourished as I haven’t played in a good eight years.

However, my first “real” social networking account was on Facebook in fifth grade. Since I was moving to a different state, a lot of my family friends wanted to keep in touch and felt that Facebook, which had begun to move into the mainstream at the time (2007), was the easiest way to do it. Not many other fifth graders had Facebooks so to keep up with my younger friends I created a Myspace account, and to this day I feel that Myspace was a bit sketchy. Since I was scared for my life about stalkers (which schools drilled into our heads were everywhere online), I began spelling my first name differently, and this stuck for the rest of high school and college (even my teachers spell it incorrectly).

My paranoia about getting found by some stalker probably began far before the incessant assemblies at my middle school about social media use because in fourth grade, I had been signing up for a new Neopets account and was asked for my zip code; I freaked out for a good month after that at night that someone was going to find me because of my zip code and email address (my mom found it hilarious when she found me one night crying about it). I’ve definitely had to publish more and more information about myself as time has gone on online because of the advent of online shopping. It does kind of scare me that Amazon has three of my debit/credit card numbers stored as well as my billing and shipping addresses, and that I am so willing to give Mint.com my credit/debit card information in exchange for a nicely sorted personalized budget and spending infographic each week. In addition, my bank probably has my social security number stored on some online database, which worries me to an extent as well. I’m not so scared about the government or future employers finding my posts but that someone will steal my identity or my money. There are multiple scam websites out there, especially in the clothes industry with Chinese sellers selling replicas of designer garments, that I have to be very careful about what I buy and pass off deals that seem too good to be true (because they probably are).

I think that the single thing that I am most wary about when it comes to publishing my information or my writing pieces online is the fact that the social media site that I publish it on, be it Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, Blogger, or Facebook (all of which I use regularly), actually owns my pictures/text/cookies/browsing data. It honestly is a bit unsettling when I’ve been on Asos or Modcloth looking at dresses one day and the next day I see an ad for the same dress pop up on the sidebar of my Facebook timeline. However, I don’t think that me looking at dresses is incriminating information and am pretty fine with the fact that Facebook can sell my browsing activity to others; it’s just the fact that if I ever decide to publish say a poem I wrote and put on Tumblr, I could get into a legal entanglement.

It’s scary but at the same time a fact of life that my face and my thoughts are now online. I can’t hide from the Internet and I don’t see why I should! I’ve embraced sharing, even oversharing, online as a millennial. How else would I be able to share pictures of my Starbucks cups with my name spelled slightly wrong?

Allerson (Allison) and Kharen (Karen) were so revolted that they felt the need to submit their pictures to starbucksspelling.tumblr.com

Works Cited

“Allison.” Starbucks Spelling. Tumblr, n.d. Web. 14 Sept. 2014. .
“Karen.” Starbucks Spelling. Tumblr, n.d. Web. 14 Sept. 2014. .
Hartman, Josh. How to Play Type to Learn 3. Youtube. N.p., n.d. Web. 13 Sept. 2014. .
“HoneySweetPixie the Yellow Kacheek.” Neopets, 2014. Author’s screenshot.