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About
Describe Yourself Like a Male Author Would refers to a social game among women on Twitter which emerged from a viral thread about the clichés male authors use to describe women which focus mostly on their figure. After a tweet suggested women describe themselves as a male author would, dozens of women replied with self-descriptions parodying male authors.
Origin
On March 30th, 2018, Twitter user @gwenckatz[1] tweeted about a thread regarding the #OwnVoices hashtag, a trending Twitter hashtag in the Twitter literary community supporting stories about marginalized communities written by members of those communities. According to her tweet, the thread she was reading featured voices complaining about the trend, comparing the authors to Social Justice Warriors. In one tweet, she pointed to a male author who claimed he was "living proof that it's possible for a male author to write an authentic female protagonist," then provided several passages from that author's book. The passages she chose were meant to convey that the author was not accurately depicting the female experience (examples shown below).
In the developing thread, Twitter user @kateleth[2] joked about how a male author would describe her (shown below, left). In the replies, Twitter user @whitneyarner[3] posted a tweet which read "new twitter challenge: describe yourself like a male author would" (shown below, right).
Spread
Following @whitneyarner's tweet, other Twitter users began parodying the style of male authors describing women by describing themselves. Some popular examples include a tweet by @shannonpurser that gained over 890 retweets and 7,700 likes (shown below, left) and a tweet by @say_shannon that gained 266 retweets and 1,900 likes (shown below, right).
The jokes were covered by Twitter Moments[4] and Daily Dot.[5] In the Twitter Moments coverage of the trend, responses from male authors who found the jokes equal parts humorous and sobering were covered (examples shown below).
Various Examples
Search Interest
Unavailable
External References
[1] Twitter – @gwenckatz
[3] Twitter – @whitneyarner
[4] Twitter – Women imagine how bad male writers would describe them
[5] Daily Dot – ‘Describe yourself like a male author would’ becomes a hilarious Twitter challenge
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