User:Browngirl123/Cheugy

Cheugy

{{copied from Cheugy}} Cheugy (/ˈtʃuːɡi/ CHOOG-ee) is an American internet neologism first coined in 2013 but due to a recent TikTok trend where users make videos describing things that they consider cheugy, it's use has resurged. The term is commonly claimed to have been recently popularized by teenagers and young adults, otherwise known as Generation Z, as a pejorative to describe lifestyle trends associated with the early 2010s and millennials. This aesthetic has been described as the opposite of "trendy" or "trying too hard". Some have also closely associated cheugy with the word basic which is often used to describe a woman who is thought to be unoriginal or mainstream, while others suggest it is not quite the same thing.

People who are cheugy are referred to as cheugs. Media described as cheugy include "live, laugh, love signs," "Minion memes," and "anything that says 'girl boss' on it". The Evening Standard said that "the cheug's logical archnemesis is probably the hipster". The term has been co-opted by some who identify with the aesthetic.

Origin

{{copied from Cheugy}} The term was coined in 2013 by Beverly Hills High School student Gabby Rason who used the term among friends to describe "people who were slightly off trend”, according to The New York Times. The term was added to Urban Dictionary in 2018. Most recently, due to a viral TikTok video that was first posted in March 2021, which now has over 800,000 views, knowledge of the word has resurged inspiring users from various media outlets to adopt the term.

Social media

{{copied from Cheugy}} The original TikTok posted in 2020 defining the word cheugy initiated a trend where users post videos with compilations of things that they consider to be cheugy; the hashtag cheugy itself has over 250 million views on TikTok. While the original TikTok video received around 100,000 likes, Vox writer Rebecca Jennings said this amount was "Twitter viral, but not TikTok viral". The New Statesman similarly said that "even on TikTok [...] it hadn't really taken mainstream hold". Broader attention outside TikTok came from a widely read New York Times article by technology reporter Taylor Lorenz in April 2021. Lorenz described the article to Vox as "one of the most-read recent stories in the Styles section." Lorenz said that while the definition of the term was "highly subjective and changing quickly," Instagram was the "pinnacle of cheugy." This post had a much wider reach than the original TikTok post; commentator Sarah Manavis said that "until last week, and certainly before Lorenz's article, few people would have heard of cheugy." Manavis described the coverage of the term as "the latest chapter in the 'war' between Gen-Z and millennials, an intergenerational conflict that can be best defined by trendy articles in digital publications and broadsheet newspapers alike, ‘questioning whether such a "war" really existed and saying that "what the coverage of the Gen-Z/millennial 'battlelines' achieves is to distract us from the very real generational inequality that exists between both of them and baby boomers."'"

Sexism

{{copied from Cheugy}} According to a May 2021 article on youth news website The Tab, "some people have suggested" that the trend belied an underlying misogyny. An article on CNET said that whether the word cheugy was sexist was "a good question," since girl bosses were female; the article, however, noted that cargo shorts and Axe Body Spray were "cheugy stuff you might associate more with men." Other male cheugy traits include tattoos of compasses. Rolling Stone, meanwhile, said that "misogyny is insidious and takes many forms in our culture, but making fun of someone for posting Minion memes is not one of them." Refinery29 said that its use was "mostly being fueled by backlash," and that "for every person [...] that proudly calls themself a 'cheug', there is someone who cries misogyny or classism." USA Today writes that despite the term being considered a newer trend, the act of pigeonholing people is not new and thus use of the term cheugy is yet another way to stereotype and dismissively categorize people. They write that though there is nothing inherently wrong with being cheugy, it may reinforce larger negative ideals. Although "online harassment and abuse can be experienced by anyone, the most virulent, persistent, and invasive online harassment is disproportionately experiences by women." Thus, some people are concerned that terms and trend like cheugy "might reinforce sexist or racist norms of appearance."

Youth culture

{{copied from Cheugy}} The term is claimed by many to reflect intergenerational conflict: Rolling Stone said that "Millennials [...] are forced to confront the vestiges of our own mortality in the form of relentless, merciless roasting from Gen Z", and Vice said that "cheugy, just like the Gen Z-Millennial war, can also be a phase that comes and goes." The Cut said that "so far, much of the cheugy discourse is people just trying to suss out what is and isn't cheugy. The rest appears to be millennials having an existential crisis."

Among Generation Z, the reaction to cheugy has been described as one of confusion. Inside Hook reveals that many Zoomers were unfamiliar with the term before its popularization by online spaces such as Twitter and Buzzfeed, and a common sentiment reflects that Zoomers do not view themselves as participants in the spread of cheugy, rather perceiving its popularity as “millennial on millennial violence.”

Fast Fashion and Sustainability

Redbrick news writes that trends, like the use of the word cheugy, can be harmful to the environment as “the planet is getting hotter and landfills are getting fuller.” Though cheugy can be used to describe a wide variety of things, Redbrick reports it is often used to describe fashion trends and since the fashion industry is the second biggest polluter worldwide, Redbrick suggests it can be unsustainable and thus environmentally harmful to label things as uncool, mock or even shame individuals for example rewearing clothes from a past trend cycle. Remake highlights that cheugy is not the first term to further the agenda of the trend cycle, comparing its impact on a personal and global scale to terms like VSCO girl. Such trends, they write, accelerate the rate at which we consume fashion trends, increasing profits for brands and feeding a environmentally and socially toxic trend culture.