Basic White Girls. You know them. The ones that look like they just walked out of a Pinterest closet loaded with peplum tops and those fancy-looking watches (that I don’t even know the name of). The signature Pumpkin Spice Latte (PSL) from Starbucks they have clutched in their hand and a Victoria’s Secret PINK bag wrapped around their wrist. The photos of them that are perfectly timed for a moment of carefree laughing — or maybe it’s just when they’re voicing one of their opened-mouth vowels.
Basic White Girls (BWG) are nothing new, but we haven’t always had a name for them. Everyone defines them differently, yet describes them the same. The 2000s version of the BWG would have been spotted wearing puka shell necklaces and Hollister track jackets while I was in the dark-as-hell dressing rooms trying not to fall over as I pulled the size six jeans over my curvy thighs.
But to me, it was always more than the clothes or beverage choices. It was about their confident attitude. These girls traveled in packs, making it seem as if they were always having a blast and everything they did was important. I’d eavesdrop on the detailing of their Soul Cycle class, scroll past the perfectly composed Instagrammed brunch, and think, Maybe BWGs do have more fun.
This confident attitude is why I spent 10 years being jealous of the legendary BWG.
I tried to attain the attitude via superficial means (i.e. clothes and lifestyle choices). Growing up as a biracial girl in a fairly white community in the Pacific Northwest, I experienced plenty of moments of trying to fit within the standards of white female beauty. Continuously straightening my hair, tracking my tanning bed efforts with a heart sticker tan line on my hip and let’s not forget the aforementioned size six Hollister jeans over the curvy thighs incident.
At the end of seventh grade, I even made a list of things that I needed to improve upon before becoming a mega-cool eighth-grader:
Get tan
Get rid of acne
Shop at: AE, Hollister, A&F, Victoria’s Secret
Lose stomach fat
This list led to tons of face washes and cleansers crowding my bathroom counter, tons of crunches and sit-ups and tons of money spent on seagull-marked Hollister polos and American Eagle-branded jean skirts. I also remember several conversations in which I explained to my mom why buying a thin $25 Abercrombie & Fitch t-shirt wasn’t ridiculous.
In addition to trying to prove my self-worth through materialistic items, I spent a lot of time immersing myself into the BWG culture. I’d try to hang out with the BWGs at my middle school (or “the preps” as we called them) — sending AIM invites to go see “A Cinderella Story” or to get our nails done. I made my buddy profile background Hex Color #FF0099 and ~*tYpEd LiKe ThIs*~ (unironically). I spent way too much time putting on sticky lip gloss and sunglasses and reciting Regina George’s monologue about Janis Ian into my bathroom mirror.
Five years into this jealousy, I was pouring over “self-help books” that came in the form of Poppy publication novels: “Gossip Girl”, “The Clique”, “The A-List”, “The It Girl”, subconsciously taking notes from characters who had grown up with horseback riding lessons, glamorous family vacations and money.
How could I relate though? My vacations were spent tanning on a towel in my grandma’s backyard in rural Texas, mosquitos and humidity stripping the experience of any glamour it could possess.
The next five years went by like any good coming-of-age movie montage would go. I obsessively read Seventeen Magazine, quoted Audrey Hepburn and Marilyn Monroe, and shopped at Forever 21 during my internship in New York City.
It was during that internship in New York that I identified a BWG standing in front of me at — you guessed it — Starbucks (I was ordering a Grande White Chocolate Mocha, in case you were wondering) and I realized that this lifestyle was just not for me. This woman had on a crisp creamsicle-colored skirt, a patterned belt and a powder-fresh button-up shirt. Her nude lipstick and lengthening mascara were on-point. Her hair was the perfect balance of loose curls and beachy waves (a hairstyle I had spent many hours trying to achieve but never accomplished). I was standing there, out-of-breath, surreptitiously mopping the sweat dripping down my forehead, with one of my short legs scrunched up higher than the other. That same summer, I stopped straightening my hair and started wearing it curly. I bought my last blazer. I established that I could be confident by just being myself.
This epiphany allowed me to have the confident attitude I craved so much in middle school. It allowed me to find the freedom to do un-BWG things: buy clothes from any store I wanted, order drinks from Starbucks with only one word in the title and go places by myself. It allowed me to feel liberated.
Now, this isn’t all to say that I hate BWGs, because frankly, I still have some BWG tendencies. I still try to execute that carefree laughing Instagram photo. I have a Pinterest board entitled “hello autumn”. I think Nutella is effin’ delicious. I still shop at Forever 21 (and the clothes still don’t fit me).
I’m happy because I’m not forcing myself to pretend to like those things. I genuinely enjoy them and I don’t feel like I need them in order to hit a threshold of ~cool~. Because if being jealous of Basic White Girls taught me anything, it’s that being confident always leads to having a blast.
Header via Flickr
Felicia Fitzpatrick spends her days working on digital content, and her nights memorizing “Gilmore Girls” dialogue and Broadway soundtracks. She loves eating chocolate chip cookie dough and is the proud owner of “NOW! That’s What I Call Music” CDs 4-10, 16, 19, and 20.