The “girl math” trend that’s been ubiquitous on social media for the past few weeks started as a lighthearted way for women to make fun of themselves.
“Girl math is packing a minimum of 14 pairs of underwear for a 7 day trip,” one person tweeted. “Girl math is not paying the $15 for shipping [and] instead spending another $30 to get the free shipping,” another joked.
But then men on X, formerly known as Twitter, began using the concept of girl math to roast women. “Girl math is going on vacation with 8 friends and coming back with 3,” one user wrote.
Women fought back and created a “boy math” trend to call out men’s toxic tendencies. Things got heated, fast.
Pretty soon, things devolved into a more playful free-for-all that found its way to every corner of X. Now, there’s Black math, gay math, Asian math and pretty much a math for every community. One of my personal favourites is “white math,” which has been used to call out white culture in the most hilarious ways.
For any person of colour who’s been mistaken for another person of colour by white folks — which, let’s be real, is all of us — this one definitely hits home. (Seriously, why can’t y’all tell us apart?)
Also, we must always call out the whitewashing of everything. Literally everything.
The examples of Black and Latino math have been pretty iconic, too, mostly because it’s us airing out hilarious observations about our own chaotic upbringings. As it turns out, none of us have had any original experiences.
It’s also refreshing to find that Latino goodbyes (the opposite of Irish goodbyes) are a common experience among us.
I guess all of us at some point were forced to say goodbye to every single person before leaving a party, which explains why there was usually at least an hour between the time we’d say we were heading home and the time we actually walked out the door.
Then, of course, there’s gay math. “Gay math is spending the day together and sleeping over and calling it a first date,” one person wrote. Guilty.
As with many social media trends, “girl math” has evolved into something way more useful than picking on women and femmes.
The new wave — where members of structurally marginalised communities get to roast ourselves — illuminates what we have in common culturally by allowing us to shade ourselves and each other in the best ways. And it’s definitely more useful than the stuff we learned in school.