Tag: Empowerment

How to be a bimbo in 2021

A group of TikTok creators are embracing hyperfemininity while rejecting internalized misogyny and the male gaze

In recent years, words like “bitch” and “slut” have undergone a transformation. “Bimbo” used to be a misogynistic insult, connoting an attractive but unintelligent woman. But now it is the latest word in “girl world” to go from demeaning to empowering. On TikTok, bimbos are trending. This proud new breed has embraced the identity of a new-age bimbo while sporting a pink Y2K aesthetic, worshipping icons Dolly Parton and Anna Nicole Smith, and preaching leftist values.

“A neo-bimbo unironically loves hyper-feminine fashion, jewelry and aesthetics in the face of a patriarchal institution that would deem them frivolous,” explains Bunny, who goes by the handle @bunnythebimbo. She has gained a following by making videos where she teaches classes on what she has coined as “bimbology.” Having recently graduated with a Women and Gender Studies degree from Chatham University, she loves to analyze what being a new-age bimbo means from a theoretical perspective. In one post on her Tiktok, she says bimbos take their femininity to the extreme as a way of making fun of how men perceive them in this patriarchal society. “But also we’re taking part and pleasure in it so it’s once again ours,” she points out.

Twenty-three-year-old Tennessean Hannah Foran, a.k.a. @parishiltonslefttitty, enjoys being able to dress for the male gaze, even if she’s subverting it. Ever since she was little, she’s admired the Y2K aesthetic. Known for her platinum blonde hair, plump lips, Juicy Couture, and cleavage, she says, “To me, being a new-age bimbo means you’re flipping the ‘male gaze’ on itself. You are becoming the very thing that men fear; a promiscuous, very attractive woman who plays dumb but is actually very smart once she reveals all her cards.”

New Yorker Meredith Suzuki (@maeultra) recently started to embrace being a goth-bimbo, a type of bimbo who has a darker aesthetic than the stereotypical pink.

“We are hot bitches who choose to be dumb, not just because some annoying idiot man made them like that,” she says in one clip on her TikTok. The 24-year-old believes the pandemic and capitalism pushed her towards bimboism. She became increasingly frustrated with how much more mental and emotional labour women have to do.“I wanted to break away from all that,” she says. One day she woke up and decided that she just wanted to be hot instead.

Perhaps the most successful bimbo on TikTok, Chrissy Chlapecka, 20, has attracted more than two million followers to her account, @chrissychlapecka. In a recent video, she frolics through the streets of a wintery Chicago in a thin coat unzipped to show off a pink fluffy bra. “Sweetheart, this is a sign to wear whatever the hell you want,” she tells her audience. “I don’t care if it’s snowing! Winter is a concept!” Her account is filled with videos where she’s either screaming at viewers to stop being sad over some mediocre boy, making fun of Trump supporters, or discussing how bad she is at math. Chlapecka famously finishes each of her captions to her videos with “#ihatecapitalism.”

Fifty-one-year-old Ginger Willson Pate, @glitterparis, is one of the older bimbos on the app. Her favourite part of being a bimbo is how often she’s underestimated because of her looks. She claims it has worked to her advantage in her life. Along with her daily TikTok videos, she’s a real estate agent in Silicon Valley and has a business with her partner of flipping and selling houses.

“That’s been a really lucrative career for me,” she points out, “so I’m not as stupid as I look.”

To Pate, being a bimbo means she doesn’t have to be ashamed of being ultra-girly and materialistic. “I’ve actually been put down for that by men that I’ve dated,” she says. But she’s happy the way she is. “I’m not gonna tone it down for some guy’s opinion of me,” she explains.

In the past, Concordia Journalism and Creative Writing student Nadia Trudel has struggled with letting herself care about her appearance, while simultaneously wanting to be an intelligent young woman.

“I think seeing these TikToks has encouraged me to be more unapologetically confident and take pride in my appearance without feeling shallow,” she says. Being smart and caring about your appearance had always seemed like two incompatible concepts. She’d been taught to value being smart and dislike girls who cared about their appearance. But now, she recognizes that belief system to be internalized misogyny.

Emma Amar, a Concordia Software Engineering student, categorizes the bimbo movement as a feminist movement. She believes that modern day feminism typically rejects stereotypically feminine things. As Gen Z, we are the daughters of the mothers who wouldn’t let us play with Barbies.

“Publicly deciding to embrace those qualities and still be a feminist, or still be politically informed, is really powerful because it shows that the way you look does not automatically decide how smart or informed you are,” explains Amar.

“Do you support all women regardless of their job title and if they have plastic surgery or body modifications?” Syrena (@fauxrich) asks in a TikTok video about the requirements to be a bimbo. While Syrena has not gotten any work done yet, the 22-year-old is currently studying to become a cosmetic injector.

Foran, @parishiltonslefttitty, openly admits that she had her breasts done in exchange for spanking a sugar daddy with a paddle in a leopard thong. She has blackmailed sugar daddies that were married in order to get free Botox and lip filler. “I want my nose done next,” she adds.

Ultimately, bimbos have created a safe and inclusive space on the internet where one can be themselves without judgement.

“She’s actually a radical leftist who is pro sex work, pro Black Lives Matter, pro LGBTQ+, pro choice,” Chlapecka explains in a TikTok video about the role of the bimbo, ”and will always be there for her girls, gays and theys.” While Chlapecka has progressive values, she still, as a blonde thin white woman, perfectly fits the original bimbo aesthetic from a decade ago from reality tv shows such as The Simple Life and The Girls Next Door.

Despite the progressive message of bimbo TikTok, Amar doesn’t believe that the community is sufficiently diverse. She has mostly come across white women on bimbo Tiktok.

“But I think that has a lot to do with TikTok’s algorithm,” she says. Bunny, who is a self-proclaimed fat white woman bimbo, says she’d also like to see more accounts uplifting POC and fat creators. “I think that creating your own aesthetic despite restrictions that say that you cannot be a part of it is something that can be really powerful,” Bunny explains about her own journey of embracing the bimbo aesthetic as a fat woman.

“The definition has expanded to become much more inclusive of all genders, races, body types, sexual orientations and aesthetics,” says Suzuki. In 2021, bimbo no longer just describes ditzy white blonde girls with big boobs. If that were the case, Suzuki wouldn’t be here. She’s proud of how far Gen Z bimbos have come when it comes to inclusivity and diversity. “But this is really only the beginning.”

Many bimbo creators have gotten comments from their followers claiming they want to be a bimbo but they don’t have big boobs or they don’t have the right sort of clothes. “A neo-bimbo needs to be hot, but that is not deemed by patriarchal beauty standards,” explains Bunny, “but rather by an unapologetic confidence that radiates from within.” Bunny strongly believes that anyone can be a bimbo.

Both Amar and Trudel say that since starting to watch bimbo TikToks, they have gained confidence. “It’s okay to just be like ‘I’m sexy, I’m hot,’’ Trudel says. “And it can be fully serious, or it can be kind of ironic.” To her, it seems like there’s an almost fake it till you make it quality to gaining confidence as a bimbo. “If you start acting like you are sexy and calling yourself sexy, maybe you’ll start to actually feel that way,” she explains.

Amar sometimes gets nervous about dressing in revealing clothes out of fear that others will judge her and think she looks slutty. Seeing bimbo creators dress unapologetically in hyperfeminine or hypersexual outfits has helped her become more comfortable. “It reminds me it’s okay to express myself in whatever way I want to,” she says.

While on the exterior, the bimbo movement on TikTok might seem like simply a pink aesthetic and pretty girls, it’s so much more. Syrena states that being a bimbo, at the end of the day, is a lifestyle grounded in kindness. “Loving yourself and refraining from judging others too quickly,” says Syrena, “That is the most important part of being a bimbo.”

 

Graphic by @the.beta.lab

Categories
Student Life

Sparking engagement throughout Concordia

Press photo by Concordia University

Get to know the team of students empowering other students

Ever feel like you want to do something—get involved with a social movement or community project somehow—but aren’t sure where to start? Concordia’s extra curricular community is broad and can feel pretty nebulous, which makes it hard to find what floats your boat. “There are a lot of students who come to Concordia, go to their classes, and they graduate, not having done anything with [their time at Concordia],” said Nick Gertler, a communications and political science student, as well as an ambassador for Spark!.

Spark!, a new collaborative initiative that aims to connect students with the larger community on campus, is led by the Dean of Students Office and a team of eight student ambassadors. In fall 2017, the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE), with support from la Ministère de l’Éducation et de l’Enseignement supérieur and Spark!, began researching the disparity between students’s intentions to engage in high-impact practices (HIPs), and their completion of any by graduation—or the student engagement gap, as the NSSE deemed their findings. Their main goal: decreasing that gap, and increasing student involvement, both on and off campus. “We’re trying to figure out how to best connect students with the opportunities that already exist [at Concordia], as opposed to creating a whole new thing, in and of itself,” said Gertler.

Between a handful of separate faculties, over a dozen organizations, initiatives and community projects around campus and more than 50,000 students at Concordia, it’s fair to say the student body is quite factioned off. When it comes to connecting students, “the constant problem [is] these little communication bubbles,” said Gertler. By building relationships with existing on-campus associations, unions, faculties and networking to new students through a fleet of student ambassadors, Gertler explained that Spark! is hoping to find ways in which those communication bubbles intersect and where they can be popped to spark engagement.

While Spark! has spent this past year researching and preparing for their launch, the student-led initiative will be introducing themselves to first-year classes over the next few weeks. “We’re really trying to keep the perspective of ‘meet students where they are,’” said Philippe Boucher, a first peoples studies student and ambassador for Spark!. “And with these class presentations, the goal is not really to present specific associations or projects, but more to ask questions like ‘Why get involved? What is involvement?,’” said Boucher.

According to George Kuh, founding director of NSSE, students should participate in at least two HIPs throughout their undergraduate degree: one during their first year and one in the context of their major. However, when students think about engaging in extracurricular activities on campus, explained Boucher, there’s a box those activities are put into. “Being involved is not just joining student associations,” said Boucher. “It’s studying abroad, being a research assistant, working in community engagement, […] encouraging students to apply for scholarships—everything.”

Part of being an ambassador, explained Boucher, is showing students the potential for diversity of engagement on campus by being engaged yourself. “It’s the first project I’ve ever really heard about that’s pushing for student engagement with students who are engaged.”

“I’ve been a student leader since like, first year,” said Jessica Lopez, a contemporary dance student and ambassador for Spark!. “I’ve worked with FASA, Art Matters, student council, etc., and my favourite part of all of those was the meetings. I learned how to talk in so many different ways, to so many different people, to have so many different results,” said Lopez. “I really enjoyed gaining that wider perspective of society, and want to bring that to other students.”

In addition to fostering engagement through communication and collaboration, Spark! hopes to empower individuals to see the applicability of skills they already possess. “What’s interesting about [Spark!] is that we have all these ‘resources,’ but we are those resources,” said Lopez. As ambassadors and students, we have such a wide perspective and range of experiences, Lopez explained, and part of going out and talking to students face-to-face is to help them realize they also have this knowledge. “It’s a fantastic system of engaging students, who are already engaged, to engage more students,” said Lopez.

Spark! also hopes to work with students who are already involved to help communicate and further the scope of their engagement, explained Gertler. “On that side of things, part of what we do is give [students] the language around what they’re already doing. You know, enabling people to communicate the fact that they are engaged, and that that presents opportunities for further engagement.”

“We’re kind of overwhelmed at times; there’s just so much information out there [about extracurriculars],” said Boucher. There’s also this expectation that, as students, we can extract the essence of a skill we have and immediately find where it would be applicable, said Boucher. “But there are so many different ways to engage, and part of what we do—part of our goal—is to help be a window for that information.”

To learn more about Spark! and how to contact an ambassador visit: http://www.concordia.ca/students/engagement/about.html

Featured press photo by Concordia University

Categories
Arts

Centaur Theatre’s Choir Boy is a raw, emotional and truthful telling of excellence

“This is our Black Panther moment”

When the Centaur Theatre premiered its first show on Oct. 28, 1969, the auditorium still smelled of paint and a team of plumbers had just fixed the sprinkler system.

The opening-night production of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, originally a novel by Muriel Spark and adapted for the stage by Jay Presson Allen, was reviewed by The McGill Daily’s Randy Roddick a few days later. In this rather lackluster review, Roddick acknowledged the cast’s successful performance but also mentioned the struggles the Centaur dealt with: the colour of the theatre was “shitty” (quite literally—it was brown), and the building’s safety was only given the green light by the fire department 20 minutes before curtain call.

Roddick concluded his article with: “In the future, who knows, maybe this company will become more relevant and more exciting.” If only he could have known that the Centaur would be celebrating its golden anniversary, still hosting six to 10 shows per season and acclaiming success both locally and internationally.

This year, the Centaur opened its 50th anniversary season with Choir Boy, directed by Mike Payette and written by Tarell Alvin McCraney, who won the 2017 Oscar for his screen adaptation of Moonlight. This season’s inaugural play premiered in 2012 at the Royal Court in London and is set to debut on Broadway in December 2018.

Choir Boy is about a talented singer named Pharus (played by Steven Charles) who is trying to prove to the Drew Prep School for Boys that he is the rightful leader of their choir. The coming-of-age story showcases a cast of young black men focused on their dreams while dealing with everything life throws at them.

On Oct. 12, the opening night of the season, the Centaur Theatre was full of anticipation for the show which was nothing short of fantastic. The play began with Kanye West’s “Power” and the five choir boys on an elevated part of the stage.

It wasn’t long before pieces of banter and witty jokes got the audience laughing. The back-and-forth dialogue showed the authenticity of the characters and added to the excited atmosphere of the theatre hall. The way the actors interacted with the audience allowed the crowd to feel connected and as if they were a part of the story, possibly finding a small part of themselves in what was shown on stage. The a capella numbers were simple, yet delivered with such passion and fervor; each actor was given the opportunity to show their vocal talents.

During an interview, each of the actors said they were so excited and proud to be a part of something that, on some level, represents what they have been through in their lifetime.

Vlad Alexis, who plays Junior, said they’re “doing it for the culture” and that “this is our Black Panther moment; Wakanda really is forever.”

Patrick Abellard, who plays Bobby, said he tried to explain to his friends what the show is about, but it’s really something you have to experience first-hand. Choir Boy is raw, emotional and truthful; it’s a story of acceptance, friendship and loyalty through trials and tribulations. It is a whole-heartedly inspiring story of young black excellence.

***

Choir Boy runs until Oct. 28. To see what else the Centaur is showing this season, check out their website: www.centaurtheatre.com.

 

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