Below is the abridged version of my MA Dissertation ‘Get On My Level Basics! Basic Bitches: Femininity, Instagram and Postfeminism’ submitted to Coventry University in August 2016. This abridged version was presented at 2 academic conferences in 2016.

Introduction

I think I’ll start with the biggest question that’s in the room right now, and that is, exactly what is a basic bitch?

I came across the term Basic Bitch when looking into normative Western femininities, having decided to move away from more extreme femininities that I had studied before but wanting to stay within the realm of feminine identities online. The term Basic Bitch is used to describe a person, usually a woman, who engages in certain behaviours and aesthetic performances that are seen to be ‘unoriginal’, ‘uninspired’ or otherwise just following a highly normative trend of femininity. Some of these behaviours include: drinking Starbucks, taking selfies, manicures and nail art, and a style of speech which strongly shows independence and ownership of their sexuality.

The Basic Bitch aesthetic is what I’ve been most interested in within my research, in terms of how the ‘look’ comes to shape and define a new form of feminine identity online. I would describe the Basic Bitch aesthetic as a highly sculpted, carefully maintained and incredibly skilful form of the ‘effortless femininity’ Stuart and Donaghue (2011) have described in their paper. The colour palette of the Basic Bitch look lies in natural tones that have been used to their fullest extent to create a natural-yet-made up look. Hairstyles are often simple, with messy buns, ponytails and natural-looking waves being abundant, and fashion follows in the 90’s sport-look revival that is seen in the high street. Gym or athletic clothing is also a staple of the Basic Bitch look.

Behind me you can see a few examples of the Basic Bitch aesthetic and the behaviours I’ve talked about. As you can see, it’s a highly normative form of white, western femininity that’s at work here, and given that the #basicbitch on Instagram continues to grow every time I check it (more than 200,000 at last count) it’s clear that this is something that warrants studying. This research will be forming the centre of my Masters dissertation this summer, although I have been studying it over the past year in preparation.

Hook (importance of research)

As always, the question everyone asks when talking about research is why? Why study Basic Bitches? What does a group of predominantly white, western women pouting in selfies have to do with research? I’ve been asked this question many times since starting my research on this, and my honest answer has to be that it interests me. I believe that central to research should be the passion of the person doing the research behind it. You can see from looking at me that I am a white, western woman, and I’ll be the first to admit that I indulge regularly in a number of Basic Bitch behaviours and aesthetic practices. But my own interests and subjectivity aside, the Basic Bitch on Instagram represents a number of key shifts within identity research.

It’s clear from the outset that this group of women, who self-tag themselves as ‘basic bitches’ are performing a type of Postfeminist agency on Instagram. The language, the style, the behaviours and aesthetics are all dominantly Postfeminist, almost in-your-face with it’s forwardness. This is a form of feminism that thrives in the independent female individual, and disavows the collective. The term ‘basic bitch’ may have begun as a negative insult (it first emerged in rap music in 2007), it has now been reclaimed by those who it sought to insult (Ezzell 2011). However, those who choose to call themselves ‘Basic Bitches’ seem to see other women as threats, and that being individual agents is the way forwards in terms of ‘knowing yourself’ and being able to claim an individual, single identity.

The Basic Bitch movement itself seeks to divide women, by placing them in competition with each other over appearance, clothes, accessories, and ultimately economical, social, and political standing (seen heavily through the predominance of white, Western women that take part in this hashtag). It’s clear that this is an example of 21st century Postfeminism here acting as a new kind of sexism between women. While empowering them in terms of their sexuality, agency, and independence, it’s simultaneously forcing them into competition over heteronormative standards of beauty and identity in women.

Over the past ten years there has been a huge increase in how digital platforms are used for means of identity performance, development, and engagement. Instagram is one of the newer social media platforms, and its image-based system has made it ideal for people to use as a means to explore new kinds of identities in a visual digital way that also allows for a community to develop and build. It’s unsurprising that an identity that is focused on the visual appearance (aesthetically or behaviourally) has found it’s home on Instagram. Given the explosive growth of Instagram and the rate of the Basic bitch identity movement, understanding why such an identity has emerged on a visual social media platform in this way, at this time, amongst young, Western women, is important to explore. It’s clear the Basic Bitch movement provides a space for young women to play and practice identity, but it also gives opportunity for engagement in a precariously divisive form of feminism, as well as continuing to strengthen Western hegemonic norms on a global scale when it comes to women, femininity, identity, and sexuality.

So I’ve talked a lot about what this research means. In the long run, what this research aims to do is to explore what being a Basic bitch means, in terms of the identity performances and the reasoning behind that, the agency and political implications for Postfeminism within the movement, and how Instagram as a digital platform enables both of these things to come together. In short, I want to find out what exactly the Basic Bitch movement means for young women’s identity and feminism in the current climate.

Methodology

I’ve used a feminist methodological approach throughout this research process, drawing on notions of affectivity, identity, and sensitivity towards research participants. Gill’s 2007 work has particularly formed the basis of my methodology for this paper, with support from Evans and Riley (2014), and Shields Dobson (2015) when it comes to aesthetic pleasures and postfeminism in a digital platform. I have also used a visual analysis method in researching the Basic Bitch aesthetic, and as I have focused on the form of the selfie, which is explicit in showing the participant, I have not anonymised my participants. Instead, I have credited the relevant Instagram account with each image I have used for analysis. I also used a specially set-up Instagram account that explicitly states the research intentions and purposes for which I am using it.

Primarily I have interpreted the data through this feminist approach, looking particularly at how Postfeminism is at work here within the participants and their sense of agency. Panopticism has become increasingly important to the project as it has gone in, due to its relevance in selfie culture and in the very being of social media platforms like Instagram.

Data collection itself has been straightforward, and the data is quite available on social media! Using the dedicated Instagram account, I simply search for the #basicbitch, and look through the images tagged under it. This way, I do not impose my own interpretation of what a Basic Bitch is onto participants, and instead I work with those who have openly chosen to tag themselves in this way. I then screenshot the images, and keep them for later analysis.

You can see here a few examples of the images I’ve used and gathered for research analysis purposes. In terms of analysis, I’ve used a visual analysis method, which draws directly upon the representations given in the images. I have remained aware though that these are digital, constructed images that the women themselves have created, throughout my research.

Digital Identities

I highlighted earlier that the Basic Bitch is a form of a new Postfeminist feminine identity that has emerged on social media. That the identity itself is so dismissed as being ‘basic’ – even participants themselves seem to acknowledge the negative connotations of the label at times, and seem to use irony and self awareness in their application. This in itself only causes me to be more curious about how this identity is presented, performed, and interpreted by those taking up the label of Basic Bitch.

But why exactly has the Basic Bitch emerged in the current socio-political-economic climate? There is undoubtedly increasing pressure on women to ‘have it all’ – to be sexually confident but not promiscuous, to be career minded but not pushy, to be independent but obedient. It’s a net of paradoxes that faces women today, and with feminism taking the spotlight on many media platforms (albeit at times not for the right reasons), it seems young women are waking up to the fact that they are faced with too many conflicting rules and choices that are seemingly given to them without thought. As a young woman myself, I can certainly agree that being told to own your sexuality but also to be demure and innocent is nothing short of confusing! With all these conflicting messages being put out to women – particularly young, white, western women – that they have taken up Postfeminist agency and performance is unsurprising.

Given that Postfeminism arguably presents of many of these choices – being sexually liberated, career minded, family orientated, independent and open minded and all at once – that it so clearly forms the core of the Basic Bitch movement seems like a natural path. However, that young, white, western women have primarily adopted this aggressive form of Postfeminist performance again indicates the socio-economic-political problems with feminism in the West today, and the message it spreads to young women.

 

In terms of the Basic Bitch as an identity performance, on the surface it appears to be rooted deeply in the aesthetics of femininity – hair and make up being central markers of it as an identity. The pleasures of femininity like this are undeniable for many – myself included – and the strong feelings of affect that feminine behaviours like hair and make up can have on a person can be deep. The dedication and artistry of the cosmetic skills seen in the Basic Bitch tag is evident that this goes beyond conforming to heteronormative ideals, and it has become truly something that is enjoyed by the individual for the individual – a practice that reflects the internalisation of Postfeminist ideals about the behaviours of women. I am not saying that it is wrong to enjoy make up in any capacity. I’m the first put my hand up and say I love having my hair, make up, and nails done. But it is this internalisation of a divisive feminism, a political stance that turns women into competition against each other through their physical appearance and socio-economic standing, that stands out in terms of the identity here. The fact that the identity itself has emerged and is primarily performed on the social media platform Instagram, which is image based, indicates the Panopticon at work – only this time it’s women surveying themselves and every other woman online. The power relationship remains with the (assumedly) male viewer of their images and identities, and the Panopticon of Instagram creates a competitive arena within which you will find the Basic Bitches. While the Basic Bitches are abundant on social media, there is no thread of community between them, no sense of working together or even wanting to be together on social media.

 

The value of the individual in the Basic Bitch tag is far more prevalent than the collective. Pictures rarely feature more than one person, and it seems that the selfie here is used for its more typical use of self-imaging a single person. Being a single ‘basic bitch’ is something many women using the tag embrace, either genuinely or out of irony. Regardless, the use of the identity and the understanding of its performance is clear. When the collective ‘Basic Bitches’ is used, it tends to refer in extremely derogatory terms to other women as unoriginal, man stealing, ugly, unintelligent, and all manner of other insulting terms. When an individual however uses the tag and performs the identity, it is seen as something fun, independent, empowering, and feminine – provided it stays within the single performer and they do not come together as a collective, and that the individual is adequately conforming to Western heteronormative beauty ideal of the female body. Again, this reflects the extreme divisions of the ideals that have come to form a core part of the Basic Bitch identity – which is to perform and stand alone as individuals, and that to be a collective is very, very wrong. Whether or not this is a tactical power play by patriarchal ideals on preventing the collaboration of women over inherently female traits and ideals is debatable.

 

I should be clear; I am not saying that the way they are using feminism is wrong. On the contrary, that they are using it to empower their identities, to stand up for their sexuality, and to proudly and publicly show off themselves is a great thing. My issue with the way they have used feminism here comes from the Postfeminist conflicting attitudes of ‘having it all’ and shunning the collective as if standing together is a bad thing. I believe that having feminism so intrinsically incorporated into a popular and current identity is a good thing, despite its flaws (such as promoting the continuing idea of a ‘white girls only’ feminism.) What is interesting about the total turning away from the ideal of a collective identity is that the ‘Basic Bitches’ are still part of a collective identity each time they label themselves with that hashtag. They have formed a collective identity that shuns the very idea of the collective – the identity itself embodies the paradox.

 

How the neoliberal individual has come to be realised through the performance of the Basic Bitch is interesting. These women are highly skilled make up artists, social media users, photographers, and performers of their identities. They are in no way ‘basic’. Yet they have chosen to call themselves this and to dedicate considerable time and effort to maintaining this identity performance. The identity of the ‘Basic Bitch’ embodies a number of Western heteronormative ideals around women – such as being white, slim, young, dominant-yet-submissive, and sexual-yet-innocent – but these women aren’t just taking up this identity performance. They are going beyond this to cut themselves off from a female collective, to create an identity that is totally singular in demonstrating their individuality – and more importantly, how successful they are as neoliberal citizens, having successfully performed and embodied that which Western ideology demands of them and having gone beyond this.

 

Closing

 

Perhaps what interests me most about the Basic Bitch identity is that despite all I have said on their stance of aggressive Postfeminism, performance of femininity, and adherence to Western neoliberal norms, is how ubiquitous the movement has become, how normal it is to be a woman who doesn’t like other women, who resents female company as competition. Just yesterday I was shopping in H&M, a place which mostly caters for teenagers. I saw a shirt saying ‘Basic Just Won’t Do’ – it was clearly targeted towards teenage girls. Next to it was a woman carrying a bag saying ‘No One Cares About Your Problems.’ This isn’t the first time I’ve seen such commonplace, mainstream items displaying such an aggressively neoliberal attitude towards others. I’m sure many of you will have seen similar things.

 

The identity of the Basic Bitch is a symptom of a larger societal problem that reflecting increasingly individualisation and valuing of neoliberalism over collective social ideals. That the Basic Bitch has arisen at a time when conservatism and neoliberalism are indeed the dominant political ideologies in the West comes as no surprise to me. Women on Instagram have arguably created the Basic Bitch as a means to show how ‘good’ they are at being Western neoliberal subjects. The Basic Bitch is the perfect example of showing off how good you are at neoliberalism. To be a Basic Bitch means to have access to wealth, social media, to have time to perfect and practice cosmetic skills, to afford nice clothes and bags, to incessantly drink Starbucks – and then to post all of this through a carefully crafted photo on Instagram showing all of this off but undercutting the efforts involved in all this by labelling it as ‘Basic’. Instead of striving towards this slim goal of the Basic Bitch – which is to say, to become a perfect example of a white Western neoliberal woman – we should be looking at how to ground feminism and young women in concepts like community, acknowledging the aesthetic and affective pleasures of femininity, and striving towards a feeling of a collective of women who aren’t constantly at each other’s throats simply for liking the same Starbucks as them.