A New Type of Woman Just Dropped!
My nagging doubts about the Candid Girlfriend™
Header by Sydney Hanson
Attention, women on the internet! The newest type of girl that a girl can be just dropped and it is the Candid Girlfriend™. Coined by comedian Stef Dag in an episode of a New York City TikTok series “Subway Takes”, the term describes a very specific, beautiful yet plain girl, as viewed by her boyfriend. She is mildly quirky with mousy brown hair and a love for pomegranate. Her hobbies include pottery and being candidly featured in her boyfriend’s #35mm instagram posts. The video in which Dag forges the term went viral and was quickly met with applause and backlash, and (naturally), a never-ending spiral of discourse on what the Candid Girlfriend is exactly, and what this means for society.
As a child of the internet, I am familiar with this type of online event; a confidently controversial post with an active comment section, followed by a slew of response videos, then responses to those responses, and so on until the next event. But this case and its origin video became a fixation of mine. It has stuck with me, and I’ve been ruminating on it since the spring. Why? Why am I so captivated, so haunted by this video?
First, any video to garner such an abundance of responses has to have a level of controversy. Commenters must agree or disagree or just have something to say to drive up engagement. People must have a reason to relate to the content or to share it with others. I think that the Candid Girlfriend accomplished this, because Dag’s well-detailed and almost poetic description of the archetype generated some very heated reactions. Dag describes a physically average woman who possibly studied art history and then flouts her intelligence: “she just authentically has nothing going on in her brain.” To add insult to injury, she compares the Candid Girlfriend to a Pick Me Girl, another of the internet’s girl types, and a disparaging one at that. All this to say, being called a Candid Girlfriend is not a compliment. Many women online had a knee-jerk reaction to defend the Candid Girlfriend, or to assert that she does not exist at all. I am not “5 '5 and a half with mousy brown hair” and even I felt it- I was annoyed by Dag. She calls herself a Girl’s Girl in the video, yet she puts other women down. Finally, she ends the take by saying that Candid Girlfriends are taking all the hot men. This felt particularly anti-feminist.
On the other hand, there were also TikTok users who defended Dag, saying that most people didn’t understand that in her video, she was joking. She was really mocking the men who want to date blank canvas women and make them their muse. Though I am not entirely convinced, that is what I hope Dag intended.
Though internet discourse like this can be exhausting to participate in, or even to be aware of, I like and want to know about the waves that are being made. What people are thinking, and more importantly, what they are feeling right now. These conversations are important to me.
So, these are my thoughts about the Candid Girlfriend phenomenon. First, the Candid Girlfriend is not in the same category as the Clean Girl, the It Girl, or the Pick Me Girl. She is defined by her proximity and relationship with a man only. What would a single Candid Girlfriend be? An average woman? A woman who likes pottery? A three-dimensional woman, who has a lot more going on than what is seen in a man’s Instagram stories? The Candid Girlfriend would not exist if not for the heterosexual gaze of a man, and the gaze of a woman gazing at that man. The Candid Girlfriend is closer to a Manic Pixie Dream Girl, but on the opposite end of the spectrum. While Manic Pixie Dream Girls are eccentrics with dyed hair, our Candid Girlfriends have natural brown hair, perfect skin, and no thoughts.
Like Manic Pixie Dream Girls, I don’t think the Candid Girlfriend exists. Women have more to them than that.