![]() The double-edged sword here is the fact that expressing this confidence daily renders these young women hypervisible. Hot Cheeto Girls are stereotyped as “ghetto”, which places them right in the cross-hairs of ALL the violent discrimination that the term evokes.īeing up against all of this racism, misogyny, and misogynoir and still choosing to be your authentic self takes a lot of confidence. Classmates find them mean and abrasive, and we know that Black and Brown women are consistently seen as far more aggressive than their white counterparts. People feel that Hot Cheeto Girls are extraordinarily loud, which is underscored by the belief that these young women should be quiet. The beliefs presented here are somewhat obvious and representative of known implicit biases in the school system. Now, memes are memes, but examining the origins of our humor opens us up to exploring our internal biases and unspoken beliefs. The jokes range from harmless self-roasts reliant on the Hot Cheeto Girl as a framing device, to downright racist depictions by white teens. Recently on Tik-Tok, the latest video format social media app, teens have been making a barrage of memes about the “Hot Cheeto Girls” at their schools. But again, you are at a PWI so how is all of this being filtered through the white gaze? For a lot of girls, and women, that may look like having your favorite snack in your bag, doing beauty rituals every day, or laughing as loud as you possibly can whenever the mood strikes. Seizing the little opportunities that you get to be yourself is so crucial to staying afloat in a system that, due to varying forms of segregation in most places, was built specifically to exclude you. Especially at a predominantly white institution (PWI) that seldom gives you the space to express yourself fully. Navigating the school system as Black and Brown girls is no easy task. But really, what makes her so different? Perhaps it is the fact that on a girl who already operates at about a 7-9, darker skin just seems to turn everything up to 11. She is so outside of the norm that nobody quite knows how to handle her, so most just settle on annoyance. She is extremely friendly with the teacher while she expertly swoops her baby hairs into little parabolas. You wonder how she can muster up the will to socialize outside of polite grunts at this hour, and you decide that you’ll just never get it. She strolls into homeroom, late like every day, in pajama pants with an Arizona iced tea firmly in hand. Then, from the stupor of the morning a voice rings out clear as the lunch bell, “GIRL BYE, YOU PLAY TOO MUCH. You are barely awake, as is the natural order of things. You are a student there again (I know, bare with me). Picture this: It is 7:25AM in your high school. Nandi is a Junior, English major, student staff at the Women’s Center, and member of the Retriever Poets slam poetry team
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