S! I! N! Z! I Dont Think Thats a Word
What Is 'Cheugy'? Y'all Know It When Y'all Meet It.
Out of affect? Basic? A new term to depict a certain aesthetic is gaining popularity on TikTok.
"OK TikTok, I have a new word for you that my friends and I utilise that y'all clearly are all in need of," Hallie Cain, 24, a copywriter in Los Angeles, says in a TikTok posted on March 30.
In the video, she gestures to another video of a girl who is describing "the blazon of people who go married at 20 years old" or have millennial "girlboss energy" and who wonders: What practise nosotros call this kind of person?
"I keep seeing videos like this," Ms. Cain says in her TikTok. "The word, my friend, is 'cheugy.'"
It'south non quite "bones," which can depict someone who is a conformist or perhaps generic in their tastes, and information technology's not quite "uncool." Information technology's not embarrassing or even always negative. Cheugy (pronounced chew-gee) tin be used, broadly, to depict someone who is out of engagement or trying too hard. And while a lot of cheugy things are associated with millennial women, the term can exist practical to anyone of any gender and any historic period.
Information technology'south non just a way to depict people. Co-ordinate to people who have embraced the give-and-take, the following are also cheugy: The Hype House, Golden Goose sneakers, anything associated with Barstool Sports, Gucci belts with the large double "G" logo, being really into sneaker culture, Rae Dunn pottery, and anything chevron.
"One of my friends said lasagna is cheugy," said Ms. Cain.
Things that are decidedly un-cheugy, according to its progenitors: thrifting, making your ain wearing apparel, handmade products, Levi'due south jeans, Birkenstocks, domicile decor not found at Target. "Looking good for yourself and not caring what other people recollect, that confidence exudes non-cheugyness," said Gaby Rasson, 23, a software developer in Los Angeles who coined the term.
She said she started using the word back in 2013 while attending Beverly Hills High School. She wanted a manner to depict people who were slightly off trend. But she couldn't quite come up with the right term, so she created her ain.
"Information technology was a category that didn't be," she said. "At that place was a missing word that was on the edge of my tongue and nothing to depict it and 'cheugy' came to me. How it sounded fit the meaning."
The word spread amongst her classmates, and then camp friends, then, when her friends went off to college, it took off on their campuses. "Anybody in our sorority knows the word cheugy," said Abby Siegel, 23, a producer and former pupil at the University of Colorado, Bedrock, who said she learned the phrase at a summertime camp that Ms. Rasson too attended.
But cheugy was in no way mainstream until Ms. Cain posted her TikTok. It chop-chop amassed hundreds of thousands of views, inspiring explainers.
Though cheugy has slight negative connotations, people who use the term said they often identify as cheugy themselves. "Everyone can exist cheugy," said Ms. Siegel. "Everyone has something cheugy in their closet. We didn't intend for it to be a mean thing. Some people have claimed that it is. It'southward just a fun word nosotros used every bit a group of friends that somehow resonated with a agglomeration of people."
The women as well don't claim to be the arbiters of the term. "It's also totally open up to your estimation," said Ms. Cain. "I'll send something to our grouping chat and be like, 'Is this cheugy?' and some will say 'yes' and some will say 'no.'"
Michael Cotos, 24, an actor in Los Angeles, discovered the word on TikTok and information technology immediately resonated as a niche descriptor. "I was like OMG, this is the perfect word," he said. "Information technology is a certain sub group of people that but don't quite get information technology."
Alex Lugger, 32, a boat marketer in Springfield, Mo., said that she self identifies as a bit cheugy. (She as well learned about the give-and-take through TikTok.) "We were basic in our 20s and at present we're cheugy in our 30s," she said.
Cheugy is just the latest in a long line of niche identifiers that have gained traction on the internet, where people relentlessly categorize highly specific archetypes in starter pack memes and videos. It's no coincidence that cheugy gained traction on TikTok, a platform that has functioned every bit an escape from Instagram's once dominant aesthetic, which is the height of cheugy.
Kelly Wright, an experimental sociolinguist and Ph.D. candidate at the University of Michigan who studies linguistic communication, said that with the rise of social media, "we run into words emerging to define very niche categories of people, identities and behaviors. In their core, they're marking shared events or a shared understanding of the world. These words that emerge from smaller communities have the potential to be picked up by wider audiences because of social media and that connectedness."
Ultimately words similar cheugy are as much about establishing who you lot aren't every bit who you are. "A word like cheugy is a way of labeling an in group and an out group," said Gretchen McCulloch, a linguist and the author of "Because Net," a book nigh how the net has shaped language.
She said that though the notion of cheugy has probably been around for a while, the term itself is new and novel enough to be trendy itself. "Sure types of words go through trends only like clothing and accessories do," Ms. McCulloch said. "They're fashionable for a while and get out of fashion. The word for cool gets replaced every few years, cool sticks around as a background word. Bang-up meant cool, now it'southward dated. Coming upwardly with a word like cheugy is a way to distance yourself from something that used to exist really pop until very recently."
As such, what is and isn't cheugy is highly subjective and irresolute quickly. "It'southward really easy to identify cheugy things on TikTok because TikTok is so fast paced and there'south so many trends that come up and get," said Ms. Siegel.
"I see stuff and I'thousand like, this is so overdone so I remember it'due south cheugy. Whereas if I didn't run into it on my 'For You' page, I wouldn't call back it was cheugy," she said, referring to what is essentially the TikTok dwelling page.
And for any millennials worried about being backside the trends, Ms. Cain said not to worry. "I think millennials have noticed that some things we used to consider cheugy are coming back in manner and aren't cheugy anymore," she said. "When I was starting time introduced to the discussion in 2015, low ascent jeans were cheugy. At present, vi years later, depression rise jeans are back in mode and I don't think they're cheugy anymore."
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Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/29/style/cheugy.html
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