Let’s be honest, there are countless trite TikTok trends out there. Some are silly, entertaining and harmless, while others cross over into promoting damaging beauty ideals, while being problematic and misogynistic. The latest one on my fyp to fall into the latter category is ‘girl pretty vs. boy pretty’. No, you’ve not been transported back to the 2010s – this is happening in the big year of 2023!
‘Girl pretty vs. boy pretty’ is a viral debate which has created two categories of attractiveness for women and aims to differentiate between physical traits that women find attractive versus what men find attractive. TikTok user @burnt.siennuh shared a video in October expressing her disappointment at being ‘girl pretty’ not ‘guy pretty’, which has currently seen over 3.3 million views. The comments range from confusion, like ‘Why are people making new insecurities everyday guy pretty girl pretty who cares if ur pretty ur pretty’ [sic], to discussion over which is preferable, ‘Being guy pretty but not girl pretty < ’. Since then, the trend has blown up and entered discourse across social media.
