With the arrival of the autumn months, we’ve all seen notes, posts and videos celebrating the season where all thought daughters, book girlies and the chronically online girls will be watching Gilmore girls, reading from their TBRs and posting ALL about it.
And boy is the internet rilled up about it. Just today I saw a note about someone complaining that their substack timeline was filled with posts about the same generic young girls posting the same exact things. If the note had been angled as an attack on algorithms and not said girls, perhaps I would’ve agreed. But it wasn’t.
So let me just go ahead and say it (in my best Miranda Priestly impersonation).
Hating women on social media? Groundbreaking.
Many seem quick to forget that the concept of the thought daughter originated in response of a rage-bait trend of asking people on the street of they would prefer to have a thot daughter or a gay son. With yet again another trend rooted in misogyny, women had to prove again that there are more to us than their sexuality. Thus emerged a new title that was simply meant to diverge from the misogynistic lens that has so often been stamped onto us.
While both thot daughter and thought daughter sound exactly the same, only one celebrates women rather than reducing them to sexualised beings. And yet I’ve seen more articles written, complaining about the rise of the thought daughter than articles written about the thot daughter. Why is that, can they not profit over hating misogynistic men the same way they can with young girls? Sorrows, sorrows, prayers.
But this relentless backlash is not new - every single interest catered or taken over by women and girls has known to be pointed out and scorned.
Feminine personality aesthetics often start of as casual, mindless interests, but when women are constantly mocked for these interests, and their self expression reflecting said interests, they feel the aching need to legitimise them, by making them more serious, more intense.
Women’s interest are dismissed as being less interesting than men’s. And even if a woman has an interest considered to be a male interest in society’s eye, they are not considered a true fan. Their interest falls short. Yet again, women have to constantly battle their way into being seen, legitimised.
We all remember the “name three of their songs” trend - a request made specifically to women wearing band T-shirts - as if they wore the shirt simply to appeal to the male gaze. If women are constantly scrutinised and investigated, then no wonder they feel the need to go ALL IN.
Why is it, that society is still so skeptical about women and their hobbies? And what’s more, in the branding of the thought-daughter as a literary-obsessed constantly-overthinking girl, why is it that society is still so skeptical about women and their intellectualism?
The thought-daughter trend reveals a sad truth: that the default women is not considered intellectual stimulating. For women to create a trend of them being smart and apt readers, so as to distinguish themselves from trend of them as sexually promiscuous and artistic dented, is nothing more than sad.
So while there are plenty of things to say and criticise about the thought daughter, do think about this too.
Love,
Anastasia
I think anytime women get any sort of interests at all, it’s immediately repackaged into something categorizable. Oh you like Ottessa Moshfegh? Typical thought daughter. Oh you like hydro flasks? You’re a vsco girl how boring. Men never have to deal with people trying to box them in like this.
couldn't agree more!! it's a never ending cycle of misogyny being repackaged in different forms. "you make being a thought daughter your whole personality" maybe they just like books!! or even better, they are on that part of the internet to celebrate this aspect of themselves, so of course they'll talk about it a lot online. people are too quick to view women as one-dimensional