Being described as a bimbo — a vacuous, attractive young woman, admirable only for her sex appeal — might have been insulting in the past. But good news, world! 20-year-old TikTok star Chrissy Chlapecka is here to remind us that being a bimbo is no longer something to be ashamed of! So take out that pink miniskirt, thigh-high boots and glittery eyeshadow! Chlapecka is urging us to celebrate that we can all be hot and do not need validation from men.

Yet, one cannot help but wonder: How empowering can fully embodying a hypersexualized feminine figure really be in a world in which these figures are mostly tailored to heterosexual men?

With 467.6 million views and counting, #bimbo abounds the posts of Gen Z TikTok creators who seek to reclaim a term that has been used to reduce women to their appearance since the 1920s. It is now integrated into an empowering message: women can wear whatever they want, whenever they want and men should be completely excluded from that conversation. Nevertheless, the idea stretches further than that. In a video that aims to explain who the “Gen-Z bimbo” is, Chlapecka — who, along with user Griffin Maxwell, is at the forefront of this movement — suggests that the reclamation of the term also strives to uphold inclusivity, for, as she states, “there’s bimbos, thembos [and] himbos…”. Indeed, it is not hard to find “bimbos” of all shapes, sizes, colors, sexual orientations and genders on TikTok. Maxwell, for example, who identifies as a gender non-binary individual, refuses to stick to the unspoken rules of gender expression and chooses to alternate between traditionally masculine and traditionally feminine outfits. It’s also worth noting that the hashtag #ihatecapitalism often accompanies the hashtag #bimbo, placing the movement on the left side of the political spectrum.

What is more fascinating about this phenomenon, however, is that discrediting men and their opinions seem to be its propelling force. While this might seem problematic to some, it is important to keep in mind the context in which these videos exist. Yes, many of Chlapecka’s posts urge men to “shut up”. But as she clearly articulates in one of her posts, her videos are meant to create a safe space for those who have been hurt, for the most part by straight, white, cis-gender men. In a way, #bimbotok aspires to be a cathartic place for those who feel the most oppressed by the patriarchy to find relief in the universality of their maltreatment and bring down their oppressors from the pedestal in which they reside.

However, a potential critique of the reclamation of the term “bimbo” might be that it is self-contradictory at its heart. The objective of the movement is to empower those who are most subjected to the male gaze by directly rejecting that gaze and instead prioritizing their own. Yet this rejection entails attempting to look sexy for one’s own eyes, which can be read as internalizing the male gaze, meaning engaging in self-objectification. The concept of “sexiness” is in itself a concept invented by men to objectify women’s bodies and cannot easily be divorced from this relationship. Furthermore, the rejection of traditional intellect that “BimboTok” creators embody means prioritizing looks over any other aspect of one’s own being. One might argue that reclaiming the word “bimbo” by trying to self-objectify oneself defeats the whole purpose of empowering those who were labeled as bimbos in the first place — those who were already objectified. In fact, some feminist rhetoric urges women to stop sexualizing their own bodies, implying that it might be up to them to make the objectification of the female body come to a halt.

There is one more aspect of “BimboTok” to consider. As algorithms have grown better and better at directing content that is specifically tailored to a user’s views, it’s not farfetched to infer that very few heterosexual, white, cis-gender men will come across videos created by the likes of Chrissy Chlapecka and Griffin Maxwell. What this means is that it is mostly those who agree with the empowerment of women and more generally, feminine figures, who will witness said empowerment. It is therefore relevant to ask ourselves if empowerment is actually empowerment if it only takes place within a community that already celebrates said empowerment rather than within an oppressive context that counters it. At the heart of this question is the definition of empowerment itself, which is rather poorly delimited.

In fact, scholars disagree on whether empowerment is internal or external. If it refers to acquiring “power-to” or “power-over”. If we consider empowerment to describe gaining an internal perception of power and control, then “bimbofication” — or the process of becoming a bimbo, as Maxwell describes — might just be the way to go. On the other hand, however, if we define it as acquiring power over external resources like political power or respect, then becoming a bimbo gives one nothing more than an illusion. Indeed, the power that this process yields does not seem quantifiable or measurable in any way, for it only allows one to find pleasure in the perception that one holds sexual power over heterosexual men, though it is impossible to know if this perception is correct.

This suggests that the “Bimbo Movement” might only be empowering if one considers empowerment to be internal. But how is internal empowerment beneficial if it is only through gaining external power that a cause can achieve its goal? If the reclamation of the term bimbo is not doing anything substantial, then it might only be an effort to fool ourselves into thinking that things are getting better.