Jaz cover issue low res - Flipbook - Page 17
Bimbofication
PRETTY IN
PINK
The Reclamation of Bimbo
For years it was not only acceptable but also de rigueur to
dismiss prettified or cute looking young women,
who dressed to please men or who glorified in their
femininity and sexuality, as Bimbos. Not any more!
Dr Patricia MacCormack investigates the rise of Bimbofication
I
nevitably any new simulacrum of what Western society calls ‘femininity’ claims to be uniquely of that generation, erasing the perceived inherently prosaic earlier version. This symptom, where women’s identity is as
expendable, capitalistically constructed and planned for obsolescence as
mobile phones and bingeable television. The new marketable icon of consumable femininity is the Gen Z bimbo, or ‘bimbofication’. The new bimbo
embraces and celebrates high performative femininity – pink everything, an
infantilised affect of voice and gesture coupled with flagrant sexuality. What is
interesting is that it is the adjectival element – bimbofication – rather than the
idea of the object of ‘the’ bimbo that most emerging bimbo stars describe as integral to their identity. The creator of the movement, Alicia Amira, claimed the
foundation was owning the tropes that create the gaze, making both women’s
bodies and the way they are objectified belong to them (obviously a wholesale
aspiration that does not so simply succeed). From Hellenic art inspired by the
Galatea myth to psychoanalytic film theory the idea of the woman as object
designated their signification, sexualisation and passivity by the male by whom
they are gazed upon. This would be the bimbo as described by the observer,
typical of lads mags and moral outrages at certain celebrities at the turn of the
millennium. Who got to decide who was a bimbo? Editors, producers, many
of the guilty in the aftermath of the #MeToo era, those who only got off on
the bimbo if the naming (and shaming) of that individual was as an object for
their own masculinist anxieties and satisfactions. What does ‘bimbofication’
suggest? Radically, and immersed in the self publishing social media platforms
where we all control the narratives of our identities (for better or worse), bimbofication is the becoming-bimbo activated and actively embraced by Gen Z:
I cannot even say Gen Z women because bimbofication is far more playful
and political about gender performativity and the arbitrary gender signifiers of
identity than previous decades so is not limited to imposed fantasies of biological sex, but includes women, men, non-binary and queer identities in the spectrum. It would however be naïve to say that the larger number of bimbofication
identifying people were not women. And here we have the conundrum: Can
women reclaim the tropes which repress them to authentically challenge oppressive gender power regimes, or is this something that validates those tropes
to the idiots who think all women should be this way?
Well known bimbofication representatives include Belle Delphine, Hannah
Foran and Chrissy Chlapecka. There are many more ways than just belonging
to Gen Z that feed their success and the purpose of their bimbofication. Each
is a star on social media where how they look and act are decisions made by
them alone. Yes they may cater to fan requests but ultimately the virtual nature of their existence means they answer only to themselves, an unfortunate
but necessary safety net in the world of both sex work and #MeToo (I should
point out not all bimbos, nor even these three perform sexual acts, but many
have OnlyFans accounts which either hint at or are overtly sexual). Then the
question of what constitutes sex work is challenged by these bimbofied women. Is selling one’s used bath water sex work as Belle Delphine does? Delphine
herself pastiches this absurdity by both using the bath water as a pastiche
trope in her quite bizarre and hilarious performances, and calls out the fact
that she may be crazy, self harming and suicidal but that she has so many followers while looking 8-years-old is the problem of the paedos, not of her own,
a counter-perspective so rare in the blame game.
Is fulfilling the criteria of hyper femininity demanded by patriarchal culture sex work – an argument used to critique the indentured servitude often
found in traditional marriages of all cultures which has gone unspoken? The
awful theft of agency taken from Pamela Anderson when a tape made for the
pleasure of her and her husband Tommy Lee became currency is proof that
it is not always individual women who get to decide how and what constitutes
their work or even their sex when their volition is denied them. Too often
women are made currency instead of flesh and blood humans whether they
like it or not. This does not reduce us to victims, but it does mean we cannot always guarantee any single way to navigate and fight systems that demean our
choices, desire and drives. Bimbofication should be a reflection of the kinds
of men who libidinalise hyper-feminine yet simultaneously child-like young
women, just as any criticisms of sex work should be about the ‘customers’ and
conditions of the work, not a moral vilification of the worker.
Bimbofication, sceptical though it makes me, controls the conditions of
work, and turns a potentially already objectified body into something of a
hyperreal critique of what men think a perfect woman should be. Of course,
being Gen Z, fans of the bimbofied are not only men, but again the majorSalvation/15