It's time for "basic" to die. 

I don't know who started using the word basic as an insult, but it's caught on over the past two or three years. Basic is almost always used to describe women (the-B-word-I-can't-write-on-our-company-site usually follows, making the insult even more demeaning). Being basic means a woman likes things that are adored by the masses: lattes from Starbucks, Ugg boots, wearing her hair in a topknot, listening to Maroon 5, crying at the end of The Notebook. Your liking popular stuff somehow reduces your worth or intellect because basic chicks are stupid chicks who can't think for themselves. Basic is annoying. Basic is cliché. Basic is bland.

And you know what? Basic is B.S.

Calling another woman basic is mean girl bullcrap, and we have to stop it.

I'll admit, I've called women basic before. I never really thought about the implications of doing so, either. I thought it was funny--but it's not. I mean, why do we put others down? If a woman likes drinking a PSL while wearing a scarf, is she REALLY hurting you? What do you gain by calling her basic? How does saying something mean about another person give YOU the upper hand?

Real talk here: I am a smug, pretentious, psuedo-hipster about a great number of things. I listen to whiny art rock. I spent the majority of my adolescence and early adulthood whining about "the man" and swearing off all corporations in an attempt to capture the ever-elusive essence of cool. I like a lot of stuff that isn't considered popular, but doing so doesn't make me inherently superior, and that's what bugs me about the whole basic business. It's like being in high school again, separating women into cliques and pointless dichotomies. You're either smart or dumb. You're pretty or ugly. You're cool or you're basic

It's BS, y'all. Why do we, as women, have to constantly search for ways to cut each other down? I'm not going to go all Women's Studies Minor on you here, but it's worth considering: what lessons are we teaching our daughters when we insult others? I don't my daughter to come home in tears one day because the mean girls laughed at her shoes--and I don't want my daughter to be the kind of person who joins those mean girls to laugh at others, either.

That's why BASIC has to die. It's just another way we cut each other down, and I am over it. I say drink your Starbucks. Rock those Uggs. Jam out to Taylor Swift--you do YOU. Who cares if some mean girl thinks you're basic?

I think you're beautiful. 

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