If you’ve spent a bit of time on TikTok over the past few months, you’ll have seen a reference or two to “girl dinner,” or maybe “girl math.” Or, the notion that all men think about the Roman Empire on a regular basis.
On the face of it, it’s just harmless fun. After all, we’ve all had the sort of makeshift meal that typifies girl dinner. Maybe a piece of fruit and a slice of cheese, or some leftover chicken followed by a black coffee and a couple of cookies—girl dinner doesn’t win any Michelin stars, but it’s quick and easy and tastes good.
Likewise, we’ve all bought something extra to get free shipping, or spent a little more money on a new pair of shoes than we planned, reasoning that it’s worth the money as we’ll wear them every day. That’s girl math.
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And many of us have an interest in a historical time period or a random area of the world. It’s just that the Roman Empire is one of the most popular.
But, by categorizing even the most mundane things by gender, are we putting women and men back into neat little boxes? It’s a return to the days of Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus, but this time, it’s Gen Z who are spearheading things. It also feels contradictory to many of the generation’s ideals: that gender is fluid, that men can be feminine and women can be masculine, and that you don’t have to fit into the gender binary.
Some critics even say that trends like girl math or girl dinner infantilize women, or that the way we view womanhood is changing. There’s a sort of Peter Pan-ness that’s discernible here: a desire not to grow up and face the mundanity and responsibility of adulthood. But it’s one that seems entirely directed at women.
“Acceptable and legitimate expression of womanhood online is reduced to the girl, juvenile, and often sexualized,” Siân Brooke, a fellow in computational social science at the London School of Economics and Political Science, told The Daily Beast. “The norms of this become apparent when you consider—in comparison—how unusual and rude it would be to refer to an adult man as ‘boy.’”
Clara Kelly, a digital PR specialist from Ireland, who criticized these trends in a TikTok video, told The Daily Beast that she believes these terms come from a good place. However, they ultimately highlight a massive disparity between the way society treats girls and boys.
“It’s only natural, especially post-Barbie Movie, for women to then want to reclaim their youth and have something that feels inherently theirs by adding the word girl to it,” Kelly explained. “It says, ‘Hey, this is ours, this is just for us, you can’t have this.’”
@clarabkelly Anyways girl dinner x
♬ a mirrorball girl - ayeee
Faith Martin, a music journalist and avid TikToker, believes that most of these trends are mostly harmless. However, she also believes that the girl dinner trend in particular could be harmful—especially for those who may have an eating disorder. She's concerned that young people on TikTok could change their eating habits as a result, perhaps being worried that they’re eating too much.
“Many of the girl dinner filters include coffee as a meal,” she told The Daily Beast. “The idea that girls don’t eat perpetuates the idea that we should eat less, and I think the trend is actually rooted in eating disorder culture.”
Brooke largely agrees saying, “It could be perceived as a rebranding of pro-eating disorders content, or a satirical phrase to reflect that women are often overextended and do not have time to make proper meals for themselves.”
Yet there’s a disconnect with this type of language with the way that Gen Z is largely perceived. They’re progressive. They’re liberal. They’re going to buck rigid ideals like the gender binary that have long held society back. But while the generation does tend to be more progressive, there are certain conservative streaks running through the demographic.
Take the “Puriteens,” a term that describes a burgeoning community of young people who are uncomfortable when it comes to casual sex and intimacy. The community is something that Brooke describes as a “reactionary social movement.” It's both a reaction to things like OnlyFans, but also a “policing of women’s sexuality and their ownership of it,” and perhaps not the sort of thing you’d instinctively expect from Gen Z.
“Gender has gone from something that we barely talk about, left to gender theorists like me, to a modern battleground on which everyone has an opinion on what gender is,” Brooke explained. “It is difficult to draw distinct lines across generations as the boundaries are a lot more blurred than we might like to think.”
“There are interesting complexities to how Gen Z regards gender norms,” Eve Ng, an associate professor at the School of Media Arts and Studies and the Women’s Gender and Sexuality Studies Program at Ohio University, told The Daily Beast.
She explained that Gen Z is more likely to identify as trans or non-binary, and we can infer from this that they have less reliance on the idea of a gender binary. But at the same time, many recent TikTok trends are based around the idea that men and women are fundamentally different.
“So we might ask what position Gen Zers are taking with respect to how gender influences what someone is like,” she said.
Being able to share so much information with so many people so quickly is a relatively new phenomenon. So while you might see a lot of high expectations for both genders to adhere to on TikTok, they’ve always been there. It’s just that now we can share them more readily—and to an entirely new generation.
In her eyes, the people creating content around these trends are basing them off their own experiences, and trying to help younger people avoid the mistakes they’ve made. They’ve realized that there’s unlikely to be a total shift in how we view gender roles in their lifetimes, so it’s more about making the best of the current situation.
Some people might think this sort of analysis is unnecessary. After all, things like the Roman Empire and Girl Dinner are just jokes on the Internet. But then, in an ideal world, women could just experience and enjoy life regardless of the stage they’re at, Kelly explained. It’s vital to look at the root cause of even fun trends like these ones.
As for the trends themselves, Ng views them as both poking fun at and reinforcing gender norms. She describes them as a form of “playful gender regressiveness”, in which we attribute characteristics to people based on their gender, but acknowledge the silliness of the logic that underlies these stereotypes.
Are they harmless? Perhaps not entirely—there’s the risk of reinforcing gender stereotypes. But, at the same time, these trends feel like they give Gen Z an outlet to deride and joke about the same stereotypes. They’re not going to change the world—but they can have a little fun.
