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The phrase "girl math" is an internet meme, used to describe rationalizations by young women to justify indulgent and potentially irresponsible spending habits. It originated from the social media platform TikTok, [1] later transferring over to Instagram and X (formerly Twitter).
The phrase originated from the radio show Fletch, Vaughan & Hailey, a light-hearted New Zealand podcast where the hosts, Carl Fletcher, Vaughan Smith and Hayley Sproull, chat about everyday life, pop culture, and listener questions. [2] In a July 30, 2023 segment, the hosts jokingly used “girl math” to justify recent purchases, prompting callers to contribute their own examples of humorous financial rationalization. [3] [4] Although this usage predates the viral TikTok trend, it did not receive widespread attention until the term resurfaced on social media.
The phrase became especially popular once it reached TikTok, where it went viral. [5] User @samjamessssss posted a video on August 2nd, 2023 encouraging the transition from "girl dinner", another popular TikTok trend amongst women, to girl math. The video accumulated 3.7 million views and 630.2 thousand likes, demonstrating how the video stimulated the phrase's rise in popularity, allowing it to reach wider audiences than it did prior in the New Zealand podcast. [6] [7] Following, more users and influencers, on TikTok and other social media platforms, began using the phrase in their content, causing the phrase to become a widespread trend. [8]
The trend has drawn criticism for its potential to reinforce stereotypes about women’s reasoning and mathematical abilities. These criticisms have discussed how the phrase can both reflect and shape societal perceptions of gender, [9] evaluating how it draws on existing social narratives about femininity, often using humor to comment on everyday behaviors. [10] For this reason, the trend has been said to contribute to the circulation of long-held societal gender stereotypes, particularly those suggesting that women’s reasoning is emotional, illogical, or inconsistent. [11]
These trends draw on long-standing prejudices that differentiate men’s and women’s behaviors, including assumptions about women’s decision-making skills. Gendered messages—particularly those implying that girls are less capable in math-related contexts—can reinforce internalized beliefs about female mathematical ability. [12] Labelling illogical calculations used to justify spending habits as "girl math", the trend has been said to trivialize women's mathematical abilities, thus perpetuating the stereotype that women are inherently less skilled in logical reasoning. [13] Exposure to such stereotypes can shape girls’ self-perception and performance in quantitative tasks, [14] suggesting that trends like “girl math” may interact with wider societal patterns of gendered expectations.
Beyond concerns related to gender stereotypes, critiques of have highlighted potential financial consequences of applying "girl math" rationalizations to everyday purchases. [15] Financial experts that have researched related economic phenomena, where consumers justifying potentially irresponsible spending, assert that rationalizing purchases in this way can accumulate into significant costs over time and interfere with long-term saving plans, [16] potentially resulting in psychological distress as a result of financial uncertainty. [17] [18]
The trend of girls math uses cognitive biases that are prevalent and commonly known in the economic domain. The "cashless effect" is another frequently encountered bias about people generally being more willing to buy something when physical money is not involved in the transaction. This helps explain the statement that paying with a gift card is free. Another phenomenon promoted in the girl math trend is "cost-per-use", which refers to justifying expensive purchases by dividing the sum across the days of usage. [19] [ unreliable source? ]
Other psychological concepts relevant to girls math include cognitive dissonance, confirmation bias, the framing effect, and mental accounting theory. Cognitive dissonance is the mental tension that arises from the holding of two contradicting beliefs. Girl math is applied to alleviate said mental tension through the usage of biases and heuristics.[ clarification needed ] There are multiple biases used in girl math one of them is the confirmation bias, where people choose to pay attention to evidence that supports their decision and ignore what does not. [20] The framing effect is another bias, that allows people to make inferior choices based on positive nuance. [19] [ unreliable source? ]
Mental accounting theory helps form the basis for girl math. The main premise of it is the organization of money into different "mental buckets", such as one mental bucket for paying rent and one mental bucket for going shopping. This affects how one perceives financial gains and losses in relative instead of absolute terms. If people find money on the sidewalk or get their tax refund, it makes them happy because the money has not been organized into a mental bucket yet and is therefore considered free money which can be spent however they want. [21] In the context of “girl math,” participants may apply these mental accounting strategies to justify purchases, for example treating gift cards as “free money” or considering refunds, cashback, or small windfalls as funds that can be spent without guilt. [22] By framing these forms of money in this way,, they create new mental buckets, allowing the use of mental accounting to justify purchases that may otherwise seem irrational or irresponsible. [23] [24]
