When a TikTok video goes viral, it ceases to be the possession of its creator. So was the case with the skincare brand tbh’s take on the “Boots and a Slicked-Back Bun” meme.
The viral video, which has been viewed more than 3 million times, has found unwanted attention well away from its intended audience, sparking a debate about corporate culture that has carried misogynistic undertones.
‘Boots and a Slicked-Back Bun’
Three London friends went viral earlier in July when they filmed each other chanting catchy phrases about their outfits. Each one chanted “boots and a slicked-back bun,” “cowboy boots and a blowy,” and “sambas and a little black bag.” The video has amassed more than 1 million likes since its release.
The video has the major hallmarks of a popular TikTok trend: an irreverent, catchy premise that invites parodies from other users.
As a result, the video took on a life of its own. It soon invited A-list imitations, including from U.S. TV stars and SNL alumni Amy Poehler, Rachel Dratch, and Rashida Jones, as well as a pop-up from late-night TV host Seth Meyers.
@amypoehler summer in the city
“We are inherently and organically each other’s hype women,” Maisie Sellwood, one of the women behind the original video, told the New York Times.
She said that sentiment was echoed across the internet: “99.9 percent of the response has been women uplifting women,” Sellwood said.
Tbh skincare
However, the tide has turned since a group of female colleagues at Australian beauty brand, tbh Skincare, decided to make their own riff on the meme.
The colleagues copied the meme that Sellwood and her friends started. tbh’s twenty-something founder Rachael Wilde begins by rapping “Gen Z boss and a mini.” Others shout things like “Five foot three and an attitude,” and “secret product and a trench.”
@tbhskincare I’m telling my kids this was Little Mix #bootsandaslickbackbun #workhumour #officelife #tbhskincare @maisieisobel_ ♬ original sound – tbh skincare
The video, which probably took minutes to film and edit, has led to a massive overreaction from many sides of the internet.
First, jokes were directed at the level of perceived “cringe” in the video, with users comparing the Gen Zers to millennials, who in recent years have been derided by the former for their love of Harry Potter and Pumpkin Spiced Lattes.
That came alongside people deriding the alleged “forced fun” of corporate culture, which Tbh is by no means the first company to co-opt a viral trend to sell products. Indeed, it has become a pivotal part of modern marketing strategies used by major global brands.
LinkedIn was accused last year of entering its “cringe era” as workers increasingly melded their personal and work lives together to create bizarre content for their colleagues and peers. There is often a whiff of insincerity to these trends, which inspired at least part of the backlash to tbh.
On this occasion, though, it seems most of the onslaught has something to do with the people in the video being female.
One popular response to the meme on X, formerly Twitter, carried the caption: “the HR department 1h before doing engineering layoffs.”
Women tend to dominate HR roles, making up around 71% of all positions. However, there is no evidence that the women in the video work in HR roles.
The beauty industry that tbh Skincare caters to is overwhelmingly female, as are its employees, who hold various workplace positions.
Misogyny online
Dr Lauren McCarthy, a senior lecturer in Corporate Social Responsibility at Bayes Business School, says reactions to the video were entirely out of proportion with the video itself.
“It just seems like a group of younger women working in a business and having a bit of fun and also ribbing themselves,” McCarthy told Fortune.
“If we think about misogyny as trying to police women into acting in certain ways, then that is exactly what you can see in the comments on that video.”
McCarthy urged people to ask why they were angry at the video.
“What’s so worrying about rising misogyny in organizations is that this really is about trying to curtail women from taking on certain positions,” she says.
The gender-focused sentiment of replies to the video helped push it into a corner of the internet it never intended to go: the so-called “manosphere” that has proliferated since the popularization of online personality Andrew Tate.
The women in the video have since been subjected to nondescript online abuse from accounts with a predominantly male following.
A representative for tbh didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Employees at tbh have seen the funny side of the backlash. After their clip went viral, the group posted a new video mockingly rapping top comments to their original TikTok, including “Bring back the gender pay gap” and “Women should go back to the kitchen.”
The outsized backlash is a reminder that corporate trends are subject to gender-based stereotypes. But tbh, which was little-known outside of Australia before its latest video, will surely be toasting a successful marketing play at their Monday morning meeting.