Female Who Taught Us About ‘Cheugy’ Regrets It

A couple months ago, legions of millennials figured out a helpful expression Zoomers have largely used to describe them: “Cheugy,” an adjective that broadly refers to an individual or a thing that feels a very little out-of-date and a little consider-hard. Something like … bridesmaid font, for instance, or latte artwork that looks like a fern. The class here is “basic” but without the need of the unfavorable connotations tendencies mostly beloved by people born between 1981 and 1995. A cheugy artifact is neither fantastic nor negative, just a minor previous its prime. You know cheugy when you see it, but now that cheugy has distribute outside of the TikTok universe, one woman who served popularize it — Hallie Cain — regrets her actions. And in a surprise twist, it was the realization that Lululemon is cheugy (so cheugy! cheug-town all the way!) that did her in.

In case you missed it, Cain’s contribution to the cheugy canon arrived in March, when she posted a TikTok defining the phrase and giving a couple illustrations (“Phrases on clothing” Herbal Essences Instagram captions like “I did a thing” in the wake of a haircut) for the uninitiated. “It’s also entirely open to your interpretation,” Cain told the New York Periods in a subsequent short article that spawned a complete cheugy discourse. “I’ll ship a thing to our group chat and be like, ‘Is this cheugy?’ and some will say ‘yes’ and some will say ‘no.’” One of Cain’s pals considers lasagna cheugy, but generally, the cheug rubric grades on “girlboss energy” and millennial influence.

Based on all those two criteria, Lululemon leggings would appear like a pillar of cheuginess, but the discovery that they experienced been labeled as this sort of — in the fourth installment of a TikTok calling out “cheugy tendencies I can not allow you buy” — proved a personalized reckoning for Cain.

“If you didn’t know, I posted a TikTok that introduced the entire world to the phrase ‘cheugy,’ and I have gotta reside with that now,” Cain says in a new TikTok. “That’s my daily life. I’ve received to enjoy women contact black leggings cheugy. I have to dwell understanding that I gave them the verbiage to do that.”

I imply, listen, cheugy is nicer — significantly less freighted with judgment and criticism — than the word “basic,” which is what we could have made use of just before. At the very the very least, Cain’s vocab lesson may support dissuade a pair people today from spending $100-furthermore on stretchy pants. Think about it a community provider.