Babushka

Submission 22,544

About

Babushka refers to a series of jokes and references to an image of an elderly Chechen woman wearing a eastern European head wrap commonly known as a "babushka." The term is also the collequial word for grandmother with "baba" being the Russian word for grandmother, similar to the English-language word "granny."

Origin

On January 8th, 2010, MyJulia.ru^[1] user VladEva posted a series of image about life in "Chechen-town." One of the images featured an elderly woman in a babushka smiling and point at the camera. The post (shown below) has been viewed by more than 3,800 people since.

Spread

On July 30, 2016, Facebook ^[2] account KompotIsLife posted the image as the profile image for an account about elderly eastern European women. The post received more than 300 reactions and 32 shares.

Several months later, on February 27th, 2017, the image was used in a four-panel exploitable similar to Drakeposting on the Polish website JoeMonster.com.^[3] The image featured an elderly woman in a babushka groaning next to a coke, while the bottom image shows the woman smiling next to a jug of the eastern European drink "kompot." The post (shown below, left) received more than 200 likes. The image was later shared on 9GAG and received more than 130 points.^[4]

Later that year, on December 6th, KomopotIsLife^[5] shared a variation of the meme. In this version the woman disapproves of a new television, while the bottom woman approves of older model with a doily covering the screen. The post (shown below, center) received more than 1,600 reactions, 290 shares and 90 comments.

In February 2018, Imgflip^[6] user musclecadgirl76 used the image as meme about Super Bowl LII. The post (shown below, right) received more than 720 views in one month.