Walking to the G-Eazy concert the other night at the 9:30 Club, I turned to my friend and asked her what kind of crowd would be at the show since I’m not familiar with his music. She replied “Tumblr girls.” I’m personally not a Tumblr user but I assumed that this meant the typical hipster stereotype. When I got in line, I saw what she meant: there were a hundred or so overly exposed girls in high-waisted shorts and crop tops or short dresses in the hour long line, while it was 30 degrees outside. I actually wanted to wrap my jacket around a few of them.
What I expected and saw as the typical “Tumblr girl” looked like this.
And like this.
Tumblr isn’t all about girls with great fashion taste and dream catchers though. It also has a lot of hilarious gifs, inspirational quotes, and is a great place to discover new music and art.
The “Tumblr Girl” that G-Eazy talks about in his song can be summed up by the UrbanDictionary.com definition:
“White hipster girls who post crop pics of themselves showing their tanned midriff posing highwaist short shorts, fringed shirts, and heels (if the picture doesn’t stop at their upper thighs). Sometimes a group of friends. They are all generic and are annoying. For some reason, dumbasses think everyone wants be a tumblr girl when in reality nobody but hipster blogs gives two shits about them.”
Ignoring the racially insensitive beginning of the definition, I have to ask: does this definition really define all girls on Tumblr?
G-Eazy’s video for his song “Tumblr Girl” dropped recently.
The video represents overly sexualized girls in typical hipster fashion, if not nude, who participate in risky behavior, as suggested by the definition. But can we really trust G-Eazy’s opinion? I don’t think so.
Although Tumblr has faced some criticism for having pornographic images and some “inappropriate” conversation, the fact remains that Tumblr is still a blog and that users have the right to exercise their First Amendment right of free speech.
Tumblr hosts over 420 million users. To characterize all of the women on the site as “Tumblr girls” would be ridiculous. Of course, there will be people in crop tops and high-waisted shorts, but that is a fashion trend that a lot of young women, on American University’s campus included, are following (when it’s not freezing). And so what if we are? It’s cute!
Being on Tumblr doesn’t necessarily mean someone dresses or acts a certain way, just like dressing a certain way doesn’t mean that someone is a “Tumblr Girl.” Moving forward, we should be able to appreciate each person’s style as their own and not judge them based on how a rapper or an Urban Dictionary post characterizes them.