Like so many women I know, I recently spent an eye-watering amount of money on Taylor Swift tour tickets. I’m going to shows in both London and Edinburgh — including ticket prices, accommodation and travel, this totalled around £900.
After the excitement, my next thought was guilt — I’m not a high earner with this kind of money lying around — but I managed to talk myself out of it. I reasoned that I’ve never been to Edinburgh before so I’m basically getting a free mini-break, the memories will last a lifetime, plus I nearly booked tickets to LA to see the concert there, which would’ve put me into debt. So, when you think about it, I’ve saved money, and I’m actually now in profit.
This kind of part-rational, part-flawed mental calculation has been dubbed ‘Girl Math’, and is the latest in a series of TikTok trends reclaiming the word ‘girl’ (think ‘girl dinners’ and ‘lazy girl jobs’). It started gaining traction when a radio show on New Zealand network ZM — Fletch, Vaughan and Hayley — shared their new segment of the same name.
Each viral video sees women call into the show to ask the hosts to justify their pricey purchases. In one clip, the female host and producers decide a Dyson hairdryer is, in fact, making its owner money because they’re saving $100 on getting professional blowdries, four times a week. In another, they justify a dress purchase by calculating the cost-per-wear, then subtracting how much she can sell it for — concluding that it’s ‘essentially free. ’
According to other TikToks with thousands of likes, ‘Girl Math’ also stipulates that paying with physical cash is ‘free’, returning items you’ve already bought is ‘making profit’, and food (even expensive, gourmet meals) ‘doesn’t count’ because we need food for survival.
At first, I found these clips hilarious and relatable; both in how I saw my decision-making reflected back at me, and the ways they poked fun at the mental acrobatics we do to reassure ourselves that we’re making reasonable choices. Much of it makes perfect economic sense (for example, cost-per-use is a good way of deciding whether a purchase is worthwhile), but a lot of ‘Girl Math’ logic is clearly silly and deeply flawed. And while there’s clearly comedic value in this, it also feeds into deep-rooted stereotypes about women’s inability to manage their finances.
I often describe myself as ‘bad with money’, and it’s not a characteristic I’m proud of. I find tax, bills and investments confusing, and prefer to bury my head in the sand, avoiding checking my bank balance if I can help it. I am a perfectly capable, independent adult (and I aced my Maths GCSE), but I know my avoidance comes from internalising stereotypes that finance isn’t something my little woman brain can comprehend.
These ideas hark back to a time when men were the only ones earning money, and their wives were frivolous spenders, propping up the economy by buying clothes and lipstick. And even in the face of women’s liberation, these deep-rooted ideas live on; a study by Starling bank in 2021 looked at images relating to men and women in finance, finding that men were often photographed with notes, while women are more likely to be pictured with pennies and piggy banks. When it comes to money, women are often infantilised, which can perpetuate negative messages we have about ourselves. ‘Girl Math’ seems to be a new version of that.
