• The Conference
  • Home
  • Programme
  • Venue & directions
  • Organizing Committee
  • Scientific Committee
  • Exhibitors & sponsors
  • Satellite events
  • Conference Party
• Past & future
  • Previous symposia
  • Finland 2014
  • Spain 2016
• About FU Berlin
  • University homepage
  • Humanities at FU

Programme: accepted abstracts

Abstract ID: 692

Part of Session 182: Gender ideologies in public discourses (Other abstracts in this session)

How to be a perfect “betch”: the discursive construction & display of gender ideologies

Authors: Williams, Ashley M.
Submitted by: Williams, Ashley M. (University of Virginia, United States of America)

This paper examines how gender ideologies are both constructed and displayed in the blog “Betches Love This”. Although originally created in reaction to the pervasive “bro” scene on American college campuses (as exemplified in blogs such as “Bros Like This”) since its founding in February 2011 “Betches Love This” has grown, gaining followers, advertisers and press coverage. This successful and popular site, one among an increasing number of college social life-centered blogs, instructs its readers on all the finer points of how to be a “betch”.

A betch is defined in opposition to many gendered social labels (McConnell-Ginet 2003): she is not a “bitch”, nor a “nice girl”, she grudgingly socializes with “bros”, and should stay away from “nice guys”.  This term can be considered as ‘flipping the script’ of “bitch” (c.f. Sutton 1995), but with particular limitations. For example, as the blog’s authors write in the post “About a Betch”:

“A betch is often confused with a bitch but make no mistake, they’re different. A betch isn’t just mean for no reason like a bitch is… Betchiness [is] about gaining success in a man’s world while still being hot and fun and envied.”

Race, sexuality, and class likewise are additional defining elements, as evidenced in postings about “The Token Asian Betch”, acceptable vs. unacceptable sex partners, and how a successful betch will marry only a wealthy man.

Taking a discourse analytic approach, this paper examines the construction and display of gendered ideologies with two foci: 1) an analysis of the discourse choices the blog writers make that perform “betch” speech, and 2) an analysis of the different stances (Jaffe 2009) the blog writers take as they position themselves both in opposition to “nice girls” and “bros”, and as authoritative “Head Betches”. Similar to Walton and Jaffe’s (2011) analysis of the blog “Stuff White People Like”, “Betches Love This” is presented as entertainment, and defended by its fans as parody. Unlike “Stuff White People Like”, however, its writers do not see themselves as “outsiders”, but only take the stance of being “insiders”, as betches themselves. 

Through this analysis, this paper demonstrates how “Betches Love This” is not only a reflection of the limited gendered identities available to young college women, but also both a challenge to and acceptance of the limitations of gender ideologies.

Jaffe, Alexandra. (2009). Introduction: The sociolinguistics of stance. In Jaffe, Alexandra (ed.), Stance: Sociolinguistic Perspectives. Oxford: OUP. 3-28.

McConnell-Ginet, Sally. (2003). “What’s in a name?”: Social labeling and gender practices. In Holmes, Janet and Miriam Meyerhoff (eds.), The Handbook of Language and Gender. Malden: Blackwell. 69-97.

Sutton, Laurel. (1995). Bitches and skankly hobags: The place of women in contemporary slang. In Hall, Kira and Mary Bucholtz (eds.), Gender Articulated. NY: Routledge. 279-296

Walton, Shana and Alexandra Jaffe. (2011). “Stuff White People Like”: Stance, class, race, and Internet commentary.” In Thurlow, Crispin and Kristine Mroczek (eds.), Digital Discourse: Language in the New Media. Oxford: OUP. 199-219.