TikTok’s endless gender memes are exhausting

polygon.com:

I remember the first time I truly cringed while watching a TikTok. The video showed a trend where women interrupted their boyfriends at their desks by walking into the room naked and recording the response. Given my general interests at the time — which consisted of watching edits of anime characters playing volleyball and rewatching clips of Persona 5 Royal — the trend appeared wildly out of place on my For You Page.

Fast forward two years, and trends that tie to these sorts of stereotypical and outward performances of cisgender, heteronormative gender roles have only grown on the platform. While some trends can be linked to stereotypical roles men and women might take on in a relationship, others essentialize experiences of a certain gender in general, often to the exclusion of queer identities and relationships. The prevalence of these TikTok trends gives the illusion that a very specific experience is universal among “regular people,” which feels especially insidious. It’s not just a movie or a television show peddling gendered ideas, but anyone with the app.

I couldn’t even begin to catalog them all, but there are some clear trends. First, there are videos that poke fun at things that girls supposedly do. We have “girl dinner,” where girls throw together a shabby collection of snacks and call it dinner. Then we have “girl math,” where women describe the complicated mental gymnastics that lead them to spend too much, or seem unable to manage their finances. And while some of these videos lean into gendered stereotypes, some of them do push back against certain norms — like girl dinner videos portraying women who publicly refuse to cook the perfect meal for a partner.

My feed has also been flooded with TikToks of