Monkey See Monkey do

There are trends that come and go, but some of us are good clients, and I'm wondering where the idea of copying comes from. I'm wondering how negative connotations have been placed on the idea of copying someone else. It is a patriarchal perception that women need to align with desirability. Women who receive  attention or possess an aesthetic that can be admired are often mimicked. There are choices that you begin to see everywhere. Women are socialized to believe that they need to be the “it girl” to receive that vital attention. The idea that attention is quintessential demands that many women shrink and adhere to specific standards. From when I was little to the present day, I would hear discourse that asked women to identify which character they are. Are you Serena or Blair or Haley or Peyton or Brooke or Meredith or Christina, or are you Trice from Divergent, Rachel Barry from Glee, or Santana Lopez?  Are you Jenny Humphrey or Vanessa, Caroline, Bonnie, or Elena? In Gossip Girl, high school minions, who answer to the mean girl (their queen) would be punished for wearing the same outfit or accessories as her. People go to such an unbelievable extent to categorize women in the most degrading ways, yet it still goes over everyone's head. An example of this is a trend on TikTok that defines women's beauty as deer, bird, sheep, or cow pretty.  Occupations dominated by women, such as nursing and teaching, are now unprofessional…hm? Suddenly, we are grieving opera and ballet? But these aren't trends because, since the beginning of time, people have regarded women as lame. Maybe all the trends and appropriation transpire as some sort of rebuttal in hopes of ending the argument that certain demographics are lame. All this urgency stems from everyone wanting to be redeemed as superior. 

Y2K standards are on an uptick. Oversaturation of content praising traditional marriages when women had less autonomy than they do today. Many women are saying  “girl-math, girl-dinner, I'm just a girl” all phrases that infantilize women. Social media is making it  easier for women to infantilize themselves because the appeal of virality. Patriarchy is why sexualization gives women views, but a TED talk won’t. It's why our feeds are flooded with women in the kitchen, and not women who have podcasts to educate women. Although in actuality, housewife influencers are brilliant entrepreneurs. 

In regards to returning trends and nostalgia, the fashion of 90s minimalism is an erasure of black culture and its influence. Lots of Y2K and 90s fashion or popularized stylistic choices are the same decisions that got non-white people bullied. Slick back buns, hair oiling, desi attire, doing your edges, big hoop earrings, wearing Jordans, and don't even get me started on the term streetwear. Girl-math is a saying that entails a woman being cheeky about lacking financial literacy. Girl-dinner expresses women who run on nothing, a symptom of high-functioning depression. People are extremely desensitized to women's pain, so we can often make jokes, revealing irregular habits like not peeing during an eight-hour shift. Could it be that women are so often subjected to coping in uncomfortable scenarios that they fail to be bothered by discomfort, that they cannot recognize it anymore? People find humor in women who do not take care of themselves. Some joke that their women partners don't drink water, but this is all really a cry for help. The “I'm just a girl” is a way that patriarchy has conditioned women to feign incompetence because people feel it is attractive if a woman doesn't know her ass from her elbow. If women are ridiculed for being smart, what does that tell them about playing dumb? 

There's an inverse relationship between operating in alignment with self-respect and receiving praise for women. Many trends reveal the successful brainwashing of the it-girl scarcity. The concept that there's only room for one woman to shine brightly and look amazing. To me, “it-girl” is a fallacy, a vehicle to maintain the wealth gap, legislation of our bodies, denial of intersectionality, and constructions of inferiority. There is no default. When mimicking people, we make associations with what we choose to adopt, so when we dress like someone's twin, it's because we want to feel qualities we associate with them. Women are not the only people who live vicariously through individuals who inspire them or evoke envy. I point this out because I feel it is needed for some sort of communal healing and undoing of detrimental habits.