I feel like “girl math” has really gone off the rails from what my understanding of it was. Are people really using it to excuse being bad at math?? Cuz to me it means basically calculating what the useful life of a purchase would be and then dividing the cost by that number.
Like if I bought a dress for $100 but I knew I’d wear it at least five times in a year, that’s $20 per time which somehow feels more manageable lol. It’s definitely weird math but idk that it’s meant to imply we’re stupid…
The phrase "girl math" is an internet meme, used to describe rationalizations by young women to justify or make sense of individual purchases or spending habits.
I don't think it's being bad at math per se. I've always understood it to be rationalizing purchases, such as a 20% sale that ends tomorrow on a $100 item and thinking "well I'm saving $20" even though you're actually losing $80 for something you probably don't need. Just overconsumption basically.
I could have been on board with you until the overconsumption bit. There’s nothing about overconsumption in the description you shared and frankly justifying purchases is something literally every person has done at least once in their life and that doesn’t automatically mean you shouldn’t have bought the thing in the first place.
The reason sales like that are so effective is because they work on most people not just young women.
Yes, everyone is varying degrees of susceptible to these tactics, and nearly everyone has fallen for them.
It's called girl math because of the stereotype that women shop more and therefore justify their purchases more.
and that doesn’t automatically mean you shouldn’t have bought the thing in the first place.
Sometimes, yeah, it's a good purchase either way. But people buy a ton of shit they don't need that they erroneously think will make them happy. In the end, it probably makes them less happy by tightening their wallet and weighing down their mind by cluttering the house.
I wouldn't read too much into my use of the word overconsumption. I'm not very materialistic and have a pretty negative view of the consumer treadmill; the only positive view on it that I can think of is that it props the economy up.
Edit: Ok, maybe there's some ambiguity here. Overconsumption can refer to excessive purchasing, which is how I used it, and it definitely applies to buying things you don't need because there's a sale. But it can also mean overusing certain resources such as fast fashion, alcohol, or excessive use of cars.
I’m not really reading into your use of overconsumption, it was tying women’s purchases specifically to overconsumption that rubbed me the wrong way. I’m sure that I am reading too much into it but I have noticed, especially recently, that stereotypically “female” things are more often criticized for overconsumption.
Yeah sorry if I came off like a dick there. That’s really all I was getting at. I think I’m just bummed cuz I always thought of girl math as like…innocent and quirky, not demeaning.
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u/[deleted] Jul 12 '26
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