ABSTRACT

Searching ‘Bimbo’ on the TikTok app will have one’s phone screen awash in pink hues and glossy lips. The Bimbo TikTok subcommunity sits neatly on a fence between normative and resistant in its hyperfeminine aesthetic and embodied performance. As young people abandon previous models of feminism concerned with ‘girlboss’ capitalism, some have come to create a community reclaiming and politicising the figure of the bimbo as an empowered form of femininity. This chapter explores the community of ‘BimboTok’ and its feminist and political potential (and limits thereof). The chapter ultimately rejects understanding BimboTok through an oversimplified empowerment/subjugation dichotomy in favour of examining the complex queer disidentifications being performed when these users finish their makeup and turn on their cameras.