‘Girl Math’ and ‘Boy Math’ Trends Crack Up Social Media
If you’ve been on social media during the past few weeks, you might have come across the phenomena of “girl math” and “boy math.” The terms quickly gained popularity across platforms like TikTok and X as people began making jokes about what qualifies as different types of math, but it’s been confusing to the uninitiated.
Alyssa Davies, the TikToker behind the Mixed Up Money personal finance account, shared a list of some of her own girl math equations and how they add up (or don’t), providing a useful example of the trend.
“If my favorite store is having a sale, I have to buy something or I’m actually losing money,” she explained. “Cash is not real money, so if I buy something with cash, it is free.” And if you buy a $300 purse and use it every day, it comes out to less than a dollar a day to use, thus making it “basically free.”
#girlmath ???????
The trend seemingly comes from a recurring segment on the New Zealand morning radio show Fletch, Vaughan, & Hayley. In the “Girl Math” segment, listeners describe purchases they’ve made and their costs, and hosts Carl Fletcher, Vaughan Smith, and Hayley Sproull try to justify the money spent until it evens out to basically be free.
Big fans of girl math ??♀️ #girlmath
Naturally, people have gone beyond rationalizing their purchases with “girl math” and made jokes about the idea that such a thing exists. “Girl math is going on vacation with eight friends and coming back with three,” one user wrote. “Girl math is buying tickets to something months in advance and basically going to the event for free since I bougt them ages ago,” another said. One praised Mariah Carey for being a professor of girl math: “When Mariah Carey sued that billionaire boyfriend she had for wasting her time and won a multi-million dollar settlement, that’s girl math.”
girl math is going on vacation with 8 friends and coming back with 3
— tola (@shinathagoat) September 26, 2023
Girl math is buying tickets to something months in advanced and basically going to the event for free since I bought them ages ago
— slim shady ?? (@zaibaxoxo) September 27, 2023
When Mariah Carey sued that billionaire boyfriend she had for wasting her time and won a multi-million dollar settlement, that’s girl math.
— Morgan Jerkins (@MorganJerkins) September 24, 2023
While “girl math” has been going strong for a while now, its reflective “boy math” jokes started to take off more recently, most of them also written by women. “Boy math is them not wanting to spend $10 on flowers because they’ll die,” one person said. “Boy math is being afraid of gold diggers when you only have three pairs of socks to your name,” another quipped. One even took aim at Elon Musk: “Boy math is paying $44 billion for a $25 billion company and, through business smarts and entrepreneurial know-how, turning it into an $8.8 billion company.”
Boy math is them not wanting to spend $10 on flowers cause they’ll die
— Lo (@solodeauxleaux) September 25, 2023
Boy math is being afraid of gold diggers when you only have 3 pairs of socks to your name.
— inqilāb (@tastefullysaucy) September 26, 2023
Boy math is paying $44 billion for a $25 billion company and, through business smarts and entrepreneurial know how, turning it into an $8.8 billion company
— Casey Johnston (@caseyjohnston) September 27, 2023
Even some politicians got in on the fun. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez jabbed at House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, writing “Boy math is needing 15 attempts to count the votes correctly to become Speaker and then shutting down the government 9 months later.”
Boy math is needing 15 attempts to count the votes correctly to become Speaker and then shutting down the government 9 months later
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) September 27, 2023
Is it time for everyone to go back to math class, or is this just how math is nowadays?
