Growing Strong
“That’s hot!”
The bimbo renaissance The traditional bimbo is an age-old sexist trope. She is the hot girl with big tits and no brains; she is the butt of the ‘dumb blonde’ joke. Founded in the ‘blonde bombshell’ trope of Old Hollywood cinema actors such as Marilyn Monroe, the bimbo has evolved and reached its second peak since the early 2000s, adapting to shifting heteronormative archetypes of femininity and attraction. The bimbo is the cultural embodiment of hyperfemininity and sexualisation,; of intelligence and beauty as mutually exclusive. Bimbos and their emergent ‘not-like-other-girls’ counterparts pit women against each other, constantly perpetuating and replicating a madonnawhore complex. Bimbos are both the standard of femininity – hot, sexy, soft – and the criticism of femininity – frivolous, vain, slutty. The bimbo is desirable whilst also evil; the epitome of the feminine paradox. Many similarities may be drawn between ‘camp’ and the bimbo. Both centre their satire on a disregard for intellectualism and the structures of taste. They mirthfully mock the elite. The bimbo ramps up the blonde bombshell archetype to the extreme, laughing in the pleasure she is not meant to take. Camp refers to the exaggeration of kitsch, to frivolously bad art and fashion—coined and dominated by queers. Camp is drag queens and Dolly Parton. Not exclusive to femininity, camp is tacky exaggeration itself. Like drag queens, modern bimbos merge hyperfemininity with camp, as a spectacle for queers. Through its extremity, the ridiculousness of the feminine ideal is revealed. The bimbo archetype is sexist because they are a depiction of heterosexual desire. To shift away from the male gaze is to queer femininity and feminine expression itself. So much of the expression of femininity is tied to male perception and desire, that the modern bimbo may be more alike to a drag queen than her forebear, the Old Hollywood blonde bombshell. The modern bimbo’s audience is not a man, and her aim is not to please. Bimbos are a spectacle, not a seduction. Stupidity is deeply gendered in its cultural and social perception, as explored in the Queer Art of Failure by Judith Halberstam. In examining gendered perceptions of stupidity, nothing illustrates the dichotomy more clearly than a comparison between the charming, goofy dad trope, and the vapid, selfish perception of the traditional bimbo. Stupidity for white men is alluring, comforting, and innocent; he retains his agency without the need for intelligence, perceived as still capable without it. Stupidity in a man functions as a tool of charm and vulnerability; for women, it is to justify their social standing under men. The bimbo trope is designed to engender stupidity and incapability by her aesthetic: long fake nails and high heels imply impracticality and thus—under the intelligence-beauty binary—stupidity. The bimbo is not only subject to gendered structures of intelligence, but also classist and imperialist structures of academia and pedagogy. Education in this country operates on a two-tier system, from the public and private school, to the university and TAFE. Knowledge is hierarchized, with the university academy sitting at the very top, and Indigenous knowledge tens of thousands of years old barely recognised at all. The university has corrupted knowledge, now existing to create new productive participants in the market, not to critique and broaden pursuits of knowledge. Skills and knowledges coded feminine are vastly undervalued unless they are professionalised, such as hairdressing, cosmetology, makeup artistry, caretaking, and other feminine coded work. Even still, these professions are valued less than other skilled work and knowledge. Feminine coded skills and knowledge are trivialised, but the bimbo brings their importance back. This includes knowledge about fashion history and crafting skills, but also extends to emotional intelligence and introspective skills, which are also coded feminine and thus undervalued. The bimbo recognises and celebrates the deep value and purpose of feminine knowledges and skills, even if the market or patriarchy do not. The modern bimbo is not unknowing. The bimbo challenges how knowledge is valued according to imperialist structures and market values. And she’s hot.
Written by Kimmy Dibben Art by Ellie Wilson
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