“Bimbocore is a kind of stoicism in a woman’s self-worth within herself, in an image not trained to corporate coldness... It’s an external energy that invades everything it interacts with. Bimbo stoicism is based.” That’s a quote from an old meme (ancient text) created by Daria Fidlobabovich, which may be the first time in history someone put “bimbo” and “stoicism” in the same sentence. 

Babushka, a 30-year-old blogger in Georgia, saw the meme and came up with a similar concept by combining two parts of her identity: “a bimbo and a stoic”. In late 2025, she started posting teachings, rules and wisdom of bimbo stoicism, which has taken off on TikTok. It involves finding your “twin animal” to understand who you are, reject conventional body image pressures, and heal your femininity. So, is ‘bimbo stoicism’ the antidote to today’s beauty standards?

If you end up in the same corner of the internet as the bimbo stoics, you’ll find a lot of young women posting their face and asking “bimbo stoicism philosophers” to assign them an animal. “I love bimbo stoicism because wdym I was insecure about my strong nose and physique when I’m actually a mountain lion,” one person posted. In the comments of Babushka’s videos, people weigh in on what animal everyone resembles. So, naturally, when I spoke to Babushka, I asked her about mine. “Caracal looks good,” she said. And I was pleased – I’ve always been drawn to cats. 

Babushka says her journey into what she calls bimbo stoicism started as her unpacking her own internalised misogyny, and the “identity issues that came with being autistic”. “It is often said that healing from internalised misogyny begins the moment a woman starts liking the colour pink again,” she says. “As for stoicism, it is the philosophy that guides my entire life. With autism, I honestly don’t think there is another way.” And thus, the marriage of the two was born. “Bimbo stoicism is a reinterpretation of femininity, female identity and female attractiveness through a matriarchal lens,” she added. 

Part of living in a patriarchal society is viewing everything through the framework of hierarchy – especially beauty. Men rate women out of ten, and call themselves “alpha” or “beta” males. By order of bimbo stoicism, no animal is more attractive than the other; they are all just different. “Who in their right mind would say that a horse is unattractive because it is large? Or that an eagle’s beak is too big? Yet women say these things about themselves every day,” says Babushka, referring to today’s beauty standards. “Once you break free from that hypnosis, it becomes obvious how absurd it is: Beauty is multidimensional. It exists on a spectrum.” 

Comparing yourself to an animal, according to Babushka, is a tool to break the culture of comparison and recognise your own unique qualities. (After centuries of men comparing women to dogs, it’s also a chance to reclaim that misogynistic narrative.) It’s an idea that caught the attention of Juniper, a 17-year-old in Orlando, Florida, when she first stumbled across a bimbo stoicism video on TikTok. “I fell in love with how many how many girls were supporting each other and complimenting each other not based on Western beauty standards,” she says. “Bimbo stoicism has a special place in my heart because not only have I been assigning animals to people my entire life, but I think it is so important for us as women to see the beauty given to us in the outside world, and the outside world in our beauty.”

Juniper told me that the animal she most resonates with is a tree kangaroo. Looking at photos of them helps her to feel more confident. “I have found love for my face, which I have struggled with loving, by comparing it to an animal I deeply cherish,” she says. Whenever she meets someone new, she quietly assigns them an animal that she associates with them. It’s a habit (or skill) that has helped Juniper assign over 150 other people animals online in a process that involves looking at gender, eye shape, nose shape, face shape and hair. “If someone had darker eyes, a small nose and small lips, I would place them in the myomorpha suborder of animals, like rats or hamsters, or even some sort of marsupial like quolls,” she says. 

A stranger commented, “You are a Velociraptor,” on a video of Keni Hill, a 36-year-old in Idaho, and she says something clicked. “I hadn’t considered that mythological, extinct or fantastical beasts could even be included, but it makes sense that really anything that the human imagination can think up should be,” she says. Hill was drawn to bimbo stoicism because of its ability to empower women who are looking for a more objective, rational and detached assessment of their own visage – she doesn’t even use the word beauty, because of the connotations. “The wolf doesn’t compare itself to the cow, and the bunny doesn’t compare itself to the deer,” says Hill, who suggested looking at nature photography to “un-brainwash” yourself and foster an appreciation for your look. 

But, because unlearning crushing patriarchal beauty standards is hard, there are videos on bimbo stoicism that veer into the competitive territory. Like other social media trends that assign you a lookalike, some people aren’t happy to be compared to, say, a pig or a whale, and would rather have a “cute” animal. Others have compared the trend to being a furry. Still, the fact that young women are attempting to reclaim their own references is likely a direct response to the narrowing of beauty standards on social media today. “We’ve entered a very conservative period of time for the standards of women, with the rise of Ozempic and looksmaxxing,” says Juniper. “If we as a society acknowledged beauty as a gift Mother Nature has given to us, similar to her other creations, people would become more confident.” 

Where the “bimbo” part of bimbo stoicism comes from is clear: people have been reclaiming bimbohood across social media over the past decade as a tool for liberation for women and queer people. The modern bimbo is politically engaged, socially aware, and not afraid of being associated with “silly feminine” things (like getting excited about being compared to a mouse). So, where does the stoicism come in? According to Anthony A Long, a retired professor of classics and philosophy at Berkeley, it may not. “I think this [comparing yourself to animals] is about as far away from any kind of stoicism as you could get,” he told me. “Stoicism is really a philosophy which is trying to say it’s your internal life – your mind, your mindset – that matters to you.” 

Ancient Stoics seemed rather uninterested in animals. According to Long, they viewed humans as superior, and looks in general were regarded as very trivial things for a Stoic to be worried about. But even if bimbo stoicism doesn’t exactly reflect Stoic philosophy, does it matter? For years, Stoicism has been a male-dominated philosophy. The ancient Stoics were men, living in a male-dominated society, and even the recent revival of Stoicism has been largely criticised for becoming a symbol of “toxic masculinity”, as what was once about cultivating vulnerability, community and empathy hit the manosphere. When I spoke to Long, he expressed that he was genuinely excited that young women were taking an interest in it. 

“It’s not an easy world for young people to grow up in, and stoicism can give people strength and change their expectations,” says Long. That is, of course, if the interest in stoicism goes further than your twin animal. So, I asked Long for a beginner’s stoicism reading list. He suggested Epictetus, an ancient Roman Stoic. Here’s a quote from him, translated by Long: “Don’t preen yourself on any distinction that is not your own. If the preening horse should say ‘I am beautiful,’ it would be acceptable. But when you are preening and say, ‘I have a beautiful horse’, admit that you are preening yourself on a good quality that belongs to the horse. What, then, is your own? The management of your own mindset.”

The founder of bimbo stoicism online today, Babushka, also encourages her new followers to go deeper than the viral animal comparisons (however fun they may be). “Many women send me their photos and ask me to help them find their spirit animal, but I think that is largely missing the point,” she says, referring to it as just an exercise. “It’s not only about appearance, but it’s also about personality, tastes, goals and energy. It is important not to waste your energy on things like obsessing over imagined flaws – a bimbo would never do that.”