Back to basics

It started as a way for me and my friends to size up our own kind. Our consolation prize on nights out, when we repel rather than attract (which is really most nights). “Always remember: guys who like girls like that were never ours to begin with,” my good friend would so often say, it’s almost like a Gregorian chant now. The “girls like that” in question would often come in packs, hair immaculately curled, straightened or treated, a current/previous It bag in tow, decked out in bondage dresses that cut and hogged Herve Leger-style. They’re the yin to our yang, the ladies who lunch to our ladies who lurch. What has been arbitrarily labeled “the basic bitch.”

I don’t know when or how we started to use that expression. Recently even, a friend has taken it to Instagram and declared that the term is o-v-e-r, and is to be replaced with “substandard bitch,” because basic got well, too basic. I know—who gets to dictate what and how? Let’s find this label-giving body! The answer is equally puzzling: no one really, and technically, no one has the right to.

It’s actually a pulling-rabbits-out-of-hats experience, trying to define what a basic bitch is — especially because it is by no means, a bad thing. Dear old Urban Dictionary made a case for the BB by way of Kreayshawn — ”Gucci Gucci, Louis Louis, Fendi Fendi, Prada. Basic bitches wear that s*** so I don’t even botha”—accompanied by the following adjectives: dull, regular (sorry, that’s extra regular), lame, etc. Urban Dictionary really likes to lay it on thick. I guess, in a more specific context, the basic bitch is a more colloquial/crude term for the Simple Girl: identified as a Longchamp toting, Paulo Coehlo quoting, Tory Burch Reva-wearing female. It’s a formula that works, sure, but it left me asking myself: what’s my beef with the basic bitch anyway?

Vice versus

In the same way that Anne Hathaway is rubbing me the wrong way these days or the manner in which I stubbornly stand by Lindsay Lohan’s career (or lack thereof), my beef is classic girl code: it’s tactical to choose a side. Segregation is the girly path to belongingness — what you are, I’m not. Yes, basicness manifests; how you put on makeup, how you do your hair. How you carry yourself and how you respond in conversations. Sometimes even the people you look up to. And there are significant points of entry for judgement, for example: what you wear, what you tweet (or retweet), what you Instagram (or your hash tag on Instagram). But by being one or the other, one isn’t establishing an advantage — but rather, a dissociation.             

So forgive us for regressing and calling each other names (the feminist in me is choked). I’d like to put it this way instead: to be basic is not a mortal sin, but at the same time, being otherwise is something you can grow into. Because fundamentally, being basic is a symptom of laziness, a complacency — a kind of settling which renders you indistinguishable from everyone else. In a way, it’s a manner of selling yourself short. There’s potential to be tapped, but it’s being held back. So think of it like this: nothing to lose, and something to gain. Embrace your own perspective, but don’t confuse it with being just a bitch (hey, T. Swift!). Execution, or rather, personal execution is everything.

The simple plan

I still remember the first time I scored myself in the Are You A Simple Girl? quiz. I chuckled through the criteria, realizing that I’m not the only one who noticed all these mundane things. I scored very, very low, and was secretly glad I did. Told you, girl code. But I also recognized that some of the girls who I know will score higher than me are my friends — which proves that some things, you can’t measure on a tally sheet.

But should you want my unsolicited advice, my road to being “personalized” was made easier by my affinity for boy friends who are “sistahfriends” and a cable subscription, but it’s still in no way less of a struggle or a daily trial and error (and also I actually own a Longchamp). There’s a selfishness involved to it, really — an exercise on tuning out the prospect of being criticized. Sometimes you’ll rub people the wrong way or seem obnoxious. Selfishness in this context just means you’re weighing your options and not going for the obvious. Or that you’ll strive to be someone that many don’t care for, and the tendency is, what people don’t understand, they just mock (in which case, welcome to the Acquired Tastes Club! Here’s a hug!).

In Basicnomics speak: give yourself more credit, and don’t just take what you can get. The one thing that you never stop investing on is yourself.