Bimbo

Bimbo is slang for a conventionally attractive, sexualized, naive, and unintelligent woman.[1] The term was originally used in the United States as early as 1919 for an unintelligent or brutish man.[2]

For other uses, see Bimbo (disambiguation).

Presumed portrait of Rosalie Duthé (1748–1830), called "the first officially recorded dumb blonde."

As of the early 21st century, the "stereotypical bimbo" appearance became that of an attractive woman. It is often used to describe women who are blonde, have curvaceous figures, heavy makeup, and revealing clothing. It is commonly associated with "the dumb blonde" stereotype.[3]

History

The word bimbo derives from the Italian bimbo,[4] a masculine-gender term that means "little or baby boy" or "young (male) child" (the feminine form of the Italian word is bimba). Use of this term began in the United States as early as 1919, and was a slang word used to describe an unintelligent[5] or brutish[6] man.

It was not until the 1920s that the term bimbo first began to be associated with women in popular culture. In 1920, Frank Crumit,[7] Billy Jones, and Aileen Stanley all recorded versions of "My Little Bimbo Down on the Bamboo Isle", with words by Grant Clarke and music by Walter Donaldson. The song uses the term "bimbo" to describe an island girl of questionable virtue. The 1929 silent film Desert Nights uses it to describe a wealthy female crook, and in The Broadway Melody, an angry Bessie Love calls a chorus girl a bimbo. The first use of its female meaning cited in the Oxford English Dictionary is dated 1929, from the scholarly journal American Speech, where the definition was given simply as "a woman".

In the 1940s, bimbo was still being used to refer to both men and women, as in, for example the comic novel Full Moon by P. G. Wodehouse who wrote of "bimbos who went about the place making passes at innocent girls after discarding their wives like old tubes of toothpaste".[8]

The term died out again for much of the 20th century until it became popular again in the 1980s and 1990s, with political sex scandals.[9] As bimbo began to be used increasingly for females, exclusively male variations of the word began to surface, like mimbo and himbo, a backformation of bimbo, which refers to an unintelligent, but attractive, man.[4]

In 2017, "The Bimbo Movement" was founded by self-proclaimed bimbo and adult star Alicia Amira,[10] "the woman most responsible for popularizing the idea of reclaiming hyper-femininity"[11] in order to destigmatise women who are bimbos and to reclaim the term "bimbo". The Bimbo Movement is a movement to empower women to be proud to embrace their femininity, take ownership of their sexuality, and fight back against the misogynistic connotations the term “bimbo” had been associated with. The bimbo movement is an internationally recognized women's rights movement consisting of hundreds of thousands of self-proclaimed bimbos working to end stigma.[12]

By the early 2020s, the term re-entered usage by way of some members of Generation Z seeking to further reclaim the pejorative, such as the "BimboTok" community on the social media platform TikTok, where users engaged in stereotypical hyper-femininity to satirise consumerism, capitalism, and misogyny.[13] TikTokers such as Chrissy Chlapecka and Griffin Maxwell Brooks have been noted as key figures in the BimboTok community.[13]

The term is sometimes associated with men or women who dye their hair blond, indicating that physical attractiveness is more important to them than other, non-physical traits[3] and as an extension to "the dumb blonde" stereotype.[3]

Politics

In American politics, the word was used in the 1990s during Bill Clinton's sexual misconduct allegations, leading to the invention of the term "Bimbo eruptions" to refer to political sex scandals.[14] The expression was also used in a 2014 report[15] in which Colin Powell explained his reluctance to vote for Hillary Clinton in light of her husband's continued affairs with "bimbos".

After the first 2015 Republican Presidential Debate, Donald Trump re-tweeted a message calling debate moderator and Fox News host Megyn Kelly a "bimbo" via Twitter.[16] This took place after Kelly asked Trump a question that referenced his television show The Apprentice from season 6 in 2005. Shortly afterwards, Stephen Richter of The Globalist published an opinion piece in which he accused Trump of being a bimbo, noting the original definition of bimbo as "an unintelligent or brutish male".[17]

See also

Regional
  • Valleyspeak
  • Ah Lian
  • Valley girl and Essex girl carry similar connotations to a young bimbo or "bimbette", but are non-synonymous.
  • Kogal or, more correctly, kogyaru and ganguro carry similar connotations as a Japanese version of a "valley girl" or bimbo.
  • Barbie is the equivalent word for Bimbo in many Hispanic countries.
  • "Loosu ponnu", meaning "Crazy girl", is a stereotype in Tamil cinema that is regarded as the equivalent of the dumb blond archetype[18][19]
  • In German, Bimbo is exclusively a racist slur for people with dark skin.[20]

References
  1. Tom Dalzell (2009), "bimbo", The Routledge Dictionary of Modern American Slang and Unconventional English, Routledge, p. 75, ISBN 978-0-415-37182-7
  2. Oxford dictionary of word origins. Cresswell, Julia, 1950-, Oxford University Press. (Second ed.). New York. 9 September 2010. ISBN 978-0199547937. OCLC 663824301.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) CS1 maint: others (link)
  3. Encyclopedia of Hair, pp. 149-151
  4. "Etymonline". Retrieved 1 November 2011.
  5. Oxford English Dictionary, 1919
  6. "Slang of 1920s". Archived from the original on 18 June 2010. Retrieved 23 June 2010.
  7. Crumit, Frank (20 October 2016). "My Little Bimbo Down on the Bamboo Isle" – via Internet Archive.
  8. Diarmaid Ó Muirithe, Words We Use: The Meaning of Words And Where They Come From, Gill & Macmillan Ltd, Oct 31, 2006
  9. Justin Cord, The Unexpected Evolution of Language: Discover the Surprising Etymology of Everyday Words Hayes Adams Media, Sep 18, 2012
  10. ‘’This Morning, ITV’
  11. Mel Magazine’
  12. Barcroft
  13. Dickson, E. J. (23 November 2020). "In 2020, the Bimbo Is Back". Rolling Stone. Retrieved 27 November 2020.
  14. Grant Barrett, Hatchet Jobs and Hardball: The Oxford Dictionary of American Political Slang , Oxford University Press, Apr 21, 2006
  15. "Colin Powell wrote in an email that Bill Clinton was 'd---ing bimbos'". Business Insider. 14 September 2016. Retrieved 29 November 2016.
  16. "Donald Trump late-night angry-tweets Megyn Kelly, and it is epic". The Washington Post.
  17. "Donald Trump Outs Himself as "Bimbo"". 4 April 2016.
  18. ""10 Enradhukulla"… A slipshod road movie". 21 October 2015.
  19. Dundoo, Sangeetha Devi (17 January 2018). "Women in Telugu cinema: Some common sense please?". The Hindu – via www.thehindu.com.
  20. "Duden | Bimbo | Rechtschreibung, Bedeutung, Definition, Herkunft".
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