Girls Don't Want a Boyfriend, They Want

Submission 5,514

About

Girls Don't Want a Boyfriend, They Want is a phrasal template expressing admiration women have for other celebrity women, which went viral on Twitter in January 2020. The format uses the following structure:

Girls don't want a boyfriend, they want a [celebrity name].

Origin

The origin of the format is unknown and saw many variations before its usage in January 2020. For example, on December 3rd, 2010, Twitter^[1] user @YungDaze14 tweeted the earliest known variation of the joke: "Single girls don't want a BOYfriend, they want them a MANfriend – Daze" (shown below).

However, the closest version to this 2020 variant was tweeted by Twitter^[2] user @spideyjongin tweeted, "girls don't want a boyfriend they want Natasha Romanoff." The post featured a GIF from the film Captain America: The Winter Soldier.

Spread

The meme continued to evolve over the next few years, reaching high-levels of usage from fans of K-Pop. On March 25th, 2019, Twitter^[2] user @cityseokjn tweeted, "girls don’t want a boyfriend they want kim seokjin." The tweet received more than 17,000 likes and 6,700 retweets in less than one year. Later that year, on September 8th, 2019, Twitter^[3] user @kthcasa, who tweeted "girls don’t want a boyfriend, they want the full version of tony montana ft jimin." The post received more than 19,000 likes and 6,700 retweets in less than one year (shown below, left).

Others in 2019, used it to describe desires fans have. For example, on November 26th, 2019, Twitter^[4] user @rickkrauhl tweeted, "girls don’t want a boyfriend they just want justin bieber to go on tour again." The tweet received more than 11,000 likes and 4,100 retweets in less than three months (shown below).

On January 19th, 2020, the meme, in reference to female celebrity, went viral, with a tweet^[5] by @jaedensink about Stranger Things stars Sadie Sink and Millie Bobby Brown. They wrote, girls don't want a boyfriend they want sadie sink and millie bobby brown." The tweet received more than 22,000 likes and 4,000 retweets in less than four days (shown below, left).

The tweet was met with some criticism for its depiction of Sink and Brown. Twitter^[6] user @thekimcatcher retweeted and commented, "girls just want to be girls. stop hypersexualizing them" (shown below, right).

However, this did not stop the meme from spreading with other celebrities. For example, on January 20th, Twitter user @auntiedyke tweeted, "girls don’t want a boyfriend they want zendaya and ana de armas" (example below, right). The tweet received more than 28,000 views, 3,000 likes and 515 retweets in less than three days (shown below).

On January 21st, the website the Daily Dot ^[7] published a story about the meme.