Scroll through TikTok and Instagram long enough, and “girl math,” “girl dinner” and “girl logic” are almost impossible to miss. What started as a harmless joke on the internet has become a part of everyday language with women joking about everything from spending money to making decisions.
For teenagers, these phrases are not difficult to encounter. According to the Pew Research Center, 63% of U.S. teens ages 13 to 17 use TikTok and 61% use Instagram. More than half of TikTok users visit the platform daily. When social media trends become part of everyday conversations, the language behind those trends deserves attention.
One of the most popular examples is “girl math,” a phrase commonly used to justify a purchase through intentionally irrational calculations. The joke depends on the idea that women are naturally bad with numbers or money, but research does not support that stereotype. The American Psychological Association reported that researchers who analyzed standardized math assessments from 10 states involving 7 million students in grades two through 11 found no difference in average math performance between boys and girls. They also found no meaningful gender differences at either high or low ends of the performance statistics.
The problem, then, is not that someone makes an occasional joke about spending money. It is that the joke uses being a girl as the explanation for supposedly being bad at math. When research finds no meaningful gender difference in average math performance, repeatedly connecting girls with mathematical incompetence reinforces a stereotype that the evidence does not support.
These jokes exist in a world where gender stereotypes about ability already develop at a young age. A 2024 meta-analysis published in Psychological Bulletin combined 98 studies involving 145,204 children ages four to 17 from 33 countries. Researchers found that children develop gender stereotypes about STEM abilities, including beliefs about who is better at different areas of science and mathematics. The researchers also found that girls increasingly endorsed stereotypes favoring male STEM ability as they got older.
This does not prove that saying “girl math” causes girls to believe they are bad at math. It does, however, show why the language surrounding gender and ability matters. If stereotypes about who is naturally good at certain subjects are already developing during childhood, constantly using “girl” as a replacement for irrational or incapable behavior is not necessarily as meaningless as it seems.
The same pattern can be seen in phrases such as “girl logic” and, depending on how it is used, “girl dinner.” None of these phrases automatically puts women down, and many are simply jokes about relatable experiences. But when multiple trends repeatedly use “girl” to explain seemingly irrational, strange or incompetent behavior, they contribute to a larger pattern of self-deprecating humor about women.
Supporters of these trends could argue that there is nothing wrong with “girl math” or “girl dinner” because they are jokes, not serious claims about women’s intelligence. Women themselves frequently participate in these trends, and making fun of shared experiences can create a sense of community. It would be unreasonable to claim that every person who uses “girl math” genuinely believes women are bad at math. In a 2023 article by The Guardian, content creator Maddy Mitchell defended “girl math,” arguing that women use the trend ironically and that critics sometimes fail to recognize the humor behind it. From this perspective, the trend allows women to laugh about relatable experiences together rather than make serious claims about their intelligence.
However, something can be humorous and still rely on a stereotype. If society already sends girls messages about what they supposedly cannot do, there is little reason to keep reinforcing those messages for the sake of a joke.
The goal should not be to eliminate humor about women. It should be to stop treating women’s supposed inferiority as the punchline.
“Girl math” may seem like nothing more than a social media trend, but it is part of a much larger conversation about how women are portrayed. For students who encounter these phrases online every day, recognizing the difference between laughing with a group and making fun of a group’s supposed shortcomings makes the joke matter.
Being a girl should describe who someone is, not what she is incapable of doing.
