The Girl Reading This

Confirmed 66,532

About

She's Beautiful. Who Is? The Girl Reading This is a phrase featured in image macros intended to surprise a girl seeing the image by breaking the fourth wall and calling her beautiful. It became the subject of ironic iterations in the mid-2010s due to its cringeworthy nature.

Origin

The phrase has appeared in various iterations for several years. For example, an image employing the concept was tweeted on June 5th, 2012 by @RileyRainbow01^[1] (shown below).

Ironic iterations began being posted a few years later. On September 19th, 2015, Weird Facebook page Unexpected Memes posted a version where the phrase was posted with a picture of John Cena, gaining about 1,300 likes and reactions (shown below).

Spread

Increasingly ironic versions of the image macro began appearing more frequently over the following years. On June 5th, 2017, Facebook page Infinite Doggo Memes^[2] published a version which featured a white dog saying the phrase (shown below, left). Another version which featured various famous Let's Players circulated around various cringe-related subreddits at the beginning of 2017 and was compiled by Mututally.^[3]

The meme also some variations where the compliment was changed to an insult. On May 12th, 2017, Instagram account sofishticated_ uploaded an edit of the John Cena version which flipped the message, gaining over 980 likes (shown below, left). Another version posted by Instagram user 35k._ changed the punchline to Smash The Like gained 68 likes (shown below, right).