I also really love these because often encounters with “That Guy” in real life can be deeply uncomfortable, isolating, and sometimes frightening experiences. These TikToks feel super joyful and communal, and point out just how ridiculous the patriarchy is, in addition to being a repressive and violent institution.
I have complete source forgetting about what clever woman said this where, but someone recently on something i was watching/listening too etc said that "creepiness" is the way we have to define something (to mostly other women) that someone (usually a man) is an implicit threat. That might seem so obvious that you're now thinking, duh, but when it was framed like that I was like RIGHT! That is what I have been saying! For social norm reasons you can't come right out and say your Volleyball coach is a potential threat, but you can say he's creepy and now every woman in that radius has their head on a swivel.
Loved these videos, horrified by the universal experiences we all have, but oh man, women are FUNNY.
Sep 13, 2023·edited Sep 13, 2023Liked by Anne Helen Petersen
Truly, the opportunity to dunk on cis-het men while performing a certain form of toxic masculinity is why I do drag as a king. It's both liberating and then I get to play with the character becoming sentient and aware of how his entitlement manifests. Many kings' characters are more genderqueer, but as a cis woman myself, I find it fun and fascinating to perform as exactly the dirtbag I encounter on a regular basis.
Mo B. Dick, someone I really admire as a drag king, has said, "Instead of being an angry woman, I became a funny man." That feels very true to this filter phenomenon.
Feel free to follow me @ScudMissel on IG or search #dragkingsofinstagram for folks who take this critique from TikTok filter to performance art.
AHP curating TikTok for my specific interests and making it so I don’t have to rejoin is the best gift I’ve ever gotten from a stranger.
These memes make me feel exactly the way the guitar-on-the-beach-with-the-Kens scene made me feel in the Barbie movie. It was such a specific experience that everyone who has ever had it happen to them instantly recognized (and truly, “everyone” includes so many women), yet it appears innocuous to those who haven’t had that experience. It’s just such a perfect capture of the patriarchy and the lived experience of being a woman in the world.
This is what sells the whole thing for me, its the ubiquity of that goatee across race/class/gender lines "It works because a man who chooses this type of facial hair is almost always a man with a gap between his self-importance and actual importance...That fucking goatee is entitlement manifest." The women who post and the guys they are are all so different, and so accurate!
There's something I also want to tease out about the point that these men can't even make a reaction, because they don't see women as people. They're also so oblivious that they don't realize what their choice in facial hair tells us. We all know. They do not.
I just want to bring up that this can surface some underlying transmascuine/butchphobia and mess with those of us who date across gender spectrum. It also brings up the issue of assigning a certain facial characteristic with someone being nice or reliable. Many of us balking at the number of transphobic laws, need to be mindful that some of our critique can tow dangerously to that line. Also, some of us with PCOS who don't remove our facial hair, along with trans folks just growing out their hair, could easily be lumped in with these cis male goatee perpetrators.
I hope that the drag king community can grow, along with awareness that facial hair, even in a TikTok filter, can be euphoria to someone finally seeing themselves. Also appreciate others who have brought up other ways this brings out racism and sexism.
I took so much glee and joy over watching these, but it was striking to me how I was so delighted to show them to my husband because I thought they were all so spot-on and hilarious and he just didn’t find nearly as funny. It really reinforced how different experiences are for people who present as women versus men.
My friends and I have marveled at the specificity! With the filter, one friend looks like she might explain bitcoin in a condescending tone, while I look like I might explain what ACTUALLY happens during menopause.
I too laughed until I cried at these, and I think there's a sort of catharsis there. In real life, when you're confronted with "that guy" you can't laugh at him to his face, because there's real danger in that. So all these coping mechanisms we've developed as women don't allow for the ridiculousness of what these guys are, and the relief of now being able to laugh at them in a safe way....catharsis.
My husband is super lazy about shaving, so he has a regular beard to clean-shaven cycle, and when he's engaging in the monumental work of shaving, he often comes out at intervals with different configurations of facial hair to make me laugh.
One time it was something not too dissimilar from this and I cracked up and said he was doing Uncle Ernisimo from Sesame Street and posted a picture on Facebook with that observation. I learned I accidentally had my status set to public when some random guy started yelling at me in comments, accusing me of being "misandrist (hate to men) , racist and highly unrespectful about individual dignity." It was definitely a lesson in how defensive men can get about the mocking of facial hair.
These are hilarious! I'm working on half a thought regarding why the reverse ("that gal") doesn't work: Beyond the patriarchy flattening all women to a limited range of personality-free attractiveness, I wonder if even women would have a hard time coming up with "that gal" without clothing/accessories (earrings, glasses, etc.)? I have seen folks do really well-rendered reels of highly specific female 'characters' (e.g. different kinds of moms at drop-off) but they involve outfits and body language etc. But I can't quite articulate why one's face alone isn't enough the way it is with the multiplicity of dirtbags from this one filter.
I’m thinking this through in real time and unsure whether I believe what follows: women in our culture are 100% accustomed to being objectified and evaluated, so when a woman is posing for (ostensibly) male pleasure, nothing about that seems weird or comical. This kind of posturing-as-an-object is less of a default mode for men (though maybe evolving in that direction as social media saturates everything). But because it’s less familiar, it’s funny to see “men” (even fake men conjured by a photo filter) engaged in self-objectification. If you ever saw the Killing Me Softly documentaries, they used this technique to defamiliarize women’s objectification by restaging commercials with men in place of women. (I remember one for Lubriderm lotion that featured a naked woman writhing around on a white background with ... an alligator crawling nearby. Because dry skin = alligator skin, I guess. The absurdity became unignorable when the conventionally attractive woman is replaced with an ordinary-but-not-unattractive hairy dude in the same scenario.) So I think the hilarity of these comes from 1) the frisson of the weirdness of male objectification, followed by 2) the shock of recognition when the text tells us that in fact we recognize this “type” at a deep level. (Stipulating that nothing improves a joke like someone trying to explain why it’s funny 🙄)
Sep 13, 2023·edited Sep 13, 2023Liked by Anne Helen Petersen
I find it interesting that early 2000's - mid 2010's R&B is the overarching theme music for the TikToks. The Usher/Tank/Ashanti soundtracks are doing some heavy lifting here too. It's especially funny because Usher was causing all that static with Keke Palmer earlier this year, lol. Maybe the goatee + soul patch is an attempt by That Guy™️ to be cool and sexy like an R&B singer, but failing? Idk I havent had coffee yet
I also really love these because often encounters with “That Guy” in real life can be deeply uncomfortable, isolating, and sometimes frightening experiences. These TikToks feel super joyful and communal, and point out just how ridiculous the patriarchy is, in addition to being a repressive and violent institution.
I really appreciate that you lurk in the depths and the shallow waters of TikTok so I don't have to. ❤️
I have complete source forgetting about what clever woman said this where, but someone recently on something i was watching/listening too etc said that "creepiness" is the way we have to define something (to mostly other women) that someone (usually a man) is an implicit threat. That might seem so obvious that you're now thinking, duh, but when it was framed like that I was like RIGHT! That is what I have been saying! For social norm reasons you can't come right out and say your Volleyball coach is a potential threat, but you can say he's creepy and now every woman in that radius has their head on a swivel.
Loved these videos, horrified by the universal experiences we all have, but oh man, women are FUNNY.
Truly, the opportunity to dunk on cis-het men while performing a certain form of toxic masculinity is why I do drag as a king. It's both liberating and then I get to play with the character becoming sentient and aware of how his entitlement manifests. Many kings' characters are more genderqueer, but as a cis woman myself, I find it fun and fascinating to perform as exactly the dirtbag I encounter on a regular basis.
Mo B. Dick, someone I really admire as a drag king, has said, "Instead of being an angry woman, I became a funny man." That feels very true to this filter phenomenon.
Feel free to follow me @ScudMissel on IG or search #dragkingsofinstagram for folks who take this critique from TikTok filter to performance art.
AHP curating TikTok for my specific interests and making it so I don’t have to rejoin is the best gift I’ve ever gotten from a stranger.
These memes make me feel exactly the way the guitar-on-the-beach-with-the-Kens scene made me feel in the Barbie movie. It was such a specific experience that everyone who has ever had it happen to them instantly recognized (and truly, “everyone” includes so many women), yet it appears innocuous to those who haven’t had that experience. It’s just such a perfect capture of the patriarchy and the lived experience of being a woman in the world.
This is what sells the whole thing for me, its the ubiquity of that goatee across race/class/gender lines "It works because a man who chooses this type of facial hair is almost always a man with a gap between his self-importance and actual importance...That fucking goatee is entitlement manifest." The women who post and the guys they are are all so different, and so accurate!
There's something I also want to tease out about the point that these men can't even make a reaction, because they don't see women as people. They're also so oblivious that they don't realize what their choice in facial hair tells us. We all know. They do not.
I just want to bring up that this can surface some underlying transmascuine/butchphobia and mess with those of us who date across gender spectrum. It also brings up the issue of assigning a certain facial characteristic with someone being nice or reliable. Many of us balking at the number of transphobic laws, need to be mindful that some of our critique can tow dangerously to that line. Also, some of us with PCOS who don't remove our facial hair, along with trans folks just growing out their hair, could easily be lumped in with these cis male goatee perpetrators.
I hope that the drag king community can grow, along with awareness that facial hair, even in a TikTok filter, can be euphoria to someone finally seeing themselves. Also appreciate others who have brought up other ways this brings out racism and sexism.
These absolutely killed me and made my day yesterday.
They also reminded me that vigilance can breed creativity--and I needed that reminder because vigilance also exhausts me to the point of immobility.
I took so much glee and joy over watching these, but it was striking to me how I was so delighted to show them to my husband because I thought they were all so spot-on and hilarious and he just didn’t find nearly as funny. It really reinforced how different experiences are for people who present as women versus men.
My friends and I have marveled at the specificity! With the filter, one friend looks like she might explain bitcoin in a condescending tone, while I look like I might explain what ACTUALLY happens during menopause.
I too laughed until I cried at these, and I think there's a sort of catharsis there. In real life, when you're confronted with "that guy" you can't laugh at him to his face, because there's real danger in that. So all these coping mechanisms we've developed as women don't allow for the ridiculousness of what these guys are, and the relief of now being able to laugh at them in a safe way....catharsis.
My husband is super lazy about shaving, so he has a regular beard to clean-shaven cycle, and when he's engaging in the monumental work of shaving, he often comes out at intervals with different configurations of facial hair to make me laugh.
One time it was something not too dissimilar from this and I cracked up and said he was doing Uncle Ernisimo from Sesame Street and posted a picture on Facebook with that observation. I learned I accidentally had my status set to public when some random guy started yelling at me in comments, accusing me of being "misandrist (hate to men) , racist and highly unrespectful about individual dignity." It was definitely a lesson in how defensive men can get about the mocking of facial hair.
These are hilarious! I'm working on half a thought regarding why the reverse ("that gal") doesn't work: Beyond the patriarchy flattening all women to a limited range of personality-free attractiveness, I wonder if even women would have a hard time coming up with "that gal" without clothing/accessories (earrings, glasses, etc.)? I have seen folks do really well-rendered reels of highly specific female 'characters' (e.g. different kinds of moms at drop-off) but they involve outfits and body language etc. But I can't quite articulate why one's face alone isn't enough the way it is with the multiplicity of dirtbags from this one filter.
I’m thinking this through in real time and unsure whether I believe what follows: women in our culture are 100% accustomed to being objectified and evaluated, so when a woman is posing for (ostensibly) male pleasure, nothing about that seems weird or comical. This kind of posturing-as-an-object is less of a default mode for men (though maybe evolving in that direction as social media saturates everything). But because it’s less familiar, it’s funny to see “men” (even fake men conjured by a photo filter) engaged in self-objectification. If you ever saw the Killing Me Softly documentaries, they used this technique to defamiliarize women’s objectification by restaging commercials with men in place of women. (I remember one for Lubriderm lotion that featured a naked woman writhing around on a white background with ... an alligator crawling nearby. Because dry skin = alligator skin, I guess. The absurdity became unignorable when the conventionally attractive woman is replaced with an ordinary-but-not-unattractive hairy dude in the same scenario.) So I think the hilarity of these comes from 1) the frisson of the weirdness of male objectification, followed by 2) the shock of recognition when the text tells us that in fact we recognize this “type” at a deep level. (Stipulating that nothing improves a joke like someone trying to explain why it’s funny 🙄)
Since I’m not on TikTok, I found a similar filter on insta, and the man I discovered is “nobody’s favorite member of the boy band.”
I find it interesting that early 2000's - mid 2010's R&B is the overarching theme music for the TikToks. The Usher/Tank/Ashanti soundtracks are doing some heavy lifting here too. It's especially funny because Usher was causing all that static with Keke Palmer earlier this year, lol. Maybe the goatee + soul patch is an attempt by That Guy™️ to be cool and sexy like an R&B singer, but failing? Idk I havent had coffee yet