Stephanie McMahon Smile

Submission 9,018

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About

Stephanie McMahon Smile, also known as Stephanie McMahon Smiling or Stephanie McMahon Headshot, refers to photographs of retired WWE wrestler Stephanie McMahon (daughter of Vince McMahon) smiling that became reaction and image macro memes in the early 2020s, commonly paired with captions about being a white woman or Karen. McMahon's perceivably aggressive and toothy smile was likened to the epitome of "white womanhood" by many online, trending in memes on X / Twitter, among other social media platforms.

Origin

The earliest known meme made with an image of Stephanie McMahon smiling was posted by X^[1] user @kylie_gender on December 28th, 2019, with a caption that followed the Nobody: phrasal template and likened McMahon to "a bich using apple pay," gaining roughly 37,700 likes in four years (shown below).

The photograph used in the meme was originally taken in February 2014 and was published to the website Getty Images^[2] on February 10th, 2014 (shown below).

Spread

Meme creators on Twitter quickly used the format going into 2020. For instance, on April 25th, 2020, X^[3] user @TinctureDrone captioned the image, "when I say 'Lynchian' instead of 'weird,'" gaining roughly 2,900 likes in three years (shown below, left). On May 5th, 2021, X^[4] user @Micah_Not_Micha posted an iteration with, "White women after they say GRACIAS to a waiter at a Mexican restaurant," gaining roughly 2,900 likes in two years (shown below, right).

In 2022 and early 2023, viral, memetic usage of the photo spread to Instagram^[5] and persisted on X.^[6] Towards late 2023, a new photo of McMahon began earning usage, started by X^[7] user @Palace_gio on September 25th, 2023, who added an almost identical caption as @Micah_Not_Micha's,^[4] gaining roughly 45,800 likes in four days (shown below, left).

The photo was then echoed by others, such as X^[8] user @internetkendra on September 28th, gaining roughly 21,700 likes in two days (shown below, right).