Boy Math / Girl Math

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Part of a series on Girl Dinner. [View Related Entries]

About

Girl Math and Boy Math are slang terms referring to a series of jokes that were popularized on TikTok and Twitter / X in the summer of 2023 about how women and men fudge or misvalue certain goods or statistics, such as women using wonky math to justify a purchase or men overstating their height through myriad caveats.

Origin

On August 2nd, 2023, TikToker samjamessssss^[1] posted a video in which she discussed the phenomenon of "Girl Math" after Girl Dinner was popularized on the app. Her video joked about the wonky math some women use to justify purchases, including "Anything under five dollars feels free" and "If you return an item for $50 and then spend $100 on another item, it's like only spending $50." The video gained over 629,000 likes in six weeks (shown below).

Spread

Over the following month, others on TikTok and Twitter joked about the concept of "girl math" as it spread online. For example, on August 15th, 2023, TikToker @danielasotohealth posted a video about the trend, gaining over 151,000 likes in five weeks (shown below, left). On September 7th, TikToker @casandra.mazzucco posted a video explaining how she and her friend justified their purchases with "girl math," gaining over 2 million likes in three weeks (shown below, right).

The rise of the trend led to articles in several news publications in August and September 2023, including BuzzFeed,^[2] The Washington Post^[3] and The Independent.^[4]

Boy Math

Shortly after the rise of "Girl Math," several commenters, particularly on Twitter / X, began hypothesizing about "Boy Math" as a response. On August 16th, 2023, Twitter user @BowTieBernard^[5] joked that "Boy Math" centers around buying items in bulk to save money in the long run, gaining over 60 retweets and 660 likes in roughly one month (shown below).

Starting in mid-September 2023, jokes about more irrational forms of "boy math" began growing popular. For example, on September 14th, Twitter user @_1ivvi^[6] joked about how men use "Boy Math" to inflate their height to 6', gaining over 1,000 retweets and 15,000 likes in 12 days (shown below, top). On September 25th, user @LaCienegaBlvdss^[7] posted a child support-focused example of "boy math," gaining over 3,400 retweets and 14,000 likes in one day (shown below, bottom).