The inevitable rise of femcels

So apparently, 2022 is the year of the femcel. I know, I know. I’d never heard of it either. Well, not until a few weeks ago when I started seeing #femcel on TikTok, emblazoned over dark videos of lone girls monologuing to their phones in chip-packet-strewn bedrooms.

And I also know that keeping up with the internet always feels like doing a Rubik’s Cube that is continually reshuffling itself – then sneers at you for being too old to understand.

So here’s the gist of it, femcels are female incels. You’ve probably heard of the term ‘‘incel’’. It refers to angry young men who can’t get laid, and are furious that women ‘‘deny them’’ their right to sex. You probably know of them from the horrifying spate of high-profile mass shootings in the US by incels taking ‘‘revenge’’ on society.

Well, now the term ‘‘femcel’’ has been coined to refer to women unable to find sex and/or romance because they are, in their words, too ugly. And it’s blowing up online.

The ideology is a lot broader than just that. But at its lonely, extremely online heart, it believes that society is inherently ‘‘lookist’’, hates ugly women and denies them real love and sex. However, unlike incels, femcels don’t try to take revenge against society by destroying it.

They argue society can’t be changed, so you need to change yourself ie makeup, diets, plastic surgery… Then you can climb the ladder of desirability, earn love and become a ‘‘Becky’’ (a normal woman with a partner) or even a ‘‘Stacy’’ (a hot woman with a partner.) They still hate society, pretty women and shallow men. They just decide to work within it rather than destroy it. This is where things get interesting – and uncomfortable.

Now, there are a lot of unlikeable parts of femcel-ism that remind you of having to babysit a 13-year-old. Like the acrid pong of self-pity that smells like one of those particularly odious Victoria’s Secret body sprays.

But the problem is that if you’re reasonably selfreflective, you can see how we got here.

Oh, I don’t like or agree with the movement. But the truth is that it’s clearly a partial reaction against the millennial era of body positivity.

Not only does the movement openly admit that it hates the ‘‘girlboss’’ era. But even concepts like openly ‘‘improving’’ yourself through surgery to climb up the ladder of a shallow society is completely at odds with millennial ideology that all bodies are equal in our #evolved world.

The problem with body positivity always was that just a bit of thinking could challenge it. And yet it never examined itself. Like the fact that it was often spearheaded by skinny, pretty blondes telling us dumplings to love ourselves. Or that while we’re more compassionate of other women’s bodies, it hasn’t changed the fact that we personally want to be skinny. Or just the obvious truth that society still prefers skinny people. And that, when it comes to dating, you will still get bullied for being fat.

See the tricky truth is that society is both shallow and deep, discriminatory and accepting, fat-shaming and body-loving. And yes, we are capable of cruelty if we don’t think you’re hot.

But millennial thinking never worked hard enough to explain this. Or even really engage with it. Instead, it taught self-love like an army drill instructor. When challenged, yell louder. And refusing to engage with our difficult, complicated attitudes to bodies and attractiveness, we let it congeal into cynicism and bitterness.

And now Gen Z is pissed that we lied to them. It’s scary, but not surprising.