The White Girl

Let’s be honest: We all love to hate white girls, especially if you’re also a white girl.

I often partake in white girl bashing, which is exemplified on my blog (and Twitter and Tumblr and all other corners of my Internet presence) but once I began to see my white girls friends being bashed by other white girls—“She’s so hoity-toity, so uppity, so jappy, so [insert some misogynistic term girls often use against other girls here].” I began to realize that when we claim to “hate” these girls, it often has more to do with hating hyper-feminine qualities rather than hating them for legitimate reasons (like, you know, these white girls being racist, homophobic, transphobic, misogynistic, or just genuinely shitty people).

Where is the line between hating whiteness and hating the white girl?

Yes, the white girl is white, and I think hating white people or whiteness in general (similar to my thoughts on saying “I hate men”) can be a valid, if not sometimes hyperbolic, expression of frustration with our white (and in regards to the “men” bit, patriarchal) society and all the idiots it produces. But why should we hate the girl? If there is anything I have learned from feminist theory, and particularly bell hooks, is that sisterhood is one of the—or at least one of my—most important tenets of feminism. I will always believe a woman’s account over a man’s account, will often if not always take the woman’s side to an argument, I will always stand by a girl’s side no matter what (yes, I understand this is bias, but no, this is not sexism “against men”).

But that’s not to say I don’t dislike, or don’t hate, any girl/woman. Most of the hatred I felt, and still at times feel towards “white girls”, is a result of growing up in an affluent, predominantly white town where my classmates, particularly female, were awful people (probably a result of their extravagant, sheltered lifestyles). They costumed themselves as “Native Americans” for Halloween, listened to Lil’ Wayne religiously yet would never even consider befriending a black classmate, called each other “nigga”, envied me for having “GBF” (gay best friend, a term I learned sophomore year when I first learned this was a “cool” thing to be in possession of) yet were inveterately homophobic, and ended up going to overpriced private universities because, well, they fucked up in high school but their parents still had enough to money to get them a nursing degree (and hopefully a boyfriend with a lot of money, too).

I can think of a couple of girls from high school I would gladly punch in the face, all of whom are white.

Yet I don’t hate these girls for their femininity as much as I hate them for their whiteness and their excessive wealth. The “GBF” ordeal is fuzzy, since it’s a stereotypically female desire to want a gay boyfriend to tote around your shopping bags and tell you how to give good a blowjob. But generally, feminine qualities have never bothered me because a. hating femininity is an act of misogyny and b. most girls who are deem themselves as “unfeminine” are attempting to other themselves from “normal” girls, which is just another, if not less blatant way of seeking out male attention (i.e. “I’m not like other girls because I play video games, watch horror films, and eat Big Macs!!—great article on this by Chelsea Fagan here).

By hating “white girls” are we not just giving boys and men the opportunity to join in on this white girl bashing? I am not saying that by being critical of femininity (which I think is extremely valid and important) you are giving each member of the male population the right to join in on this criticism, but by straight up bashing (white) women with feminine attributes are we not just participating in a misogynistic practice? What does it mean to hate women for acting like women, or at least how women are taught to act?

I am not stating that that every white girl is immune to criticism since, being white and often wealthy, they can do and say really stupid things. Rather, I am asking that the next time you are criticizing a white girl, what are you criticizing her for? Is it because she is being racist or classist or some other form of –ist or because she is complaining about the size of her thighs and keeps bugging you about some guy she has a crush on?

And as much as I get frustrated with white girls feigning mental illness, white girls posting pictures of their bruised arms on Tumblr, white girls culturally appropriating and claiming it as “appreciation”, at this moment in time, because of both personal and political situations, I think I am most frustrated with white girls hating other white girls for acting like girls. It’s not their (our) fault they (we) got socialized to be melodramatic, boy crazy, talkative, insecure people.