‘Eyo, mixed girl check’: The commodification of embodied performance in the #mixedgirlcheck trend on TikTok

Abstract

Feminist media research has provided a wide range of studies exploring how individuals navigate and negotiate their identities within the neoliberal platform economy. Popular feminist ideas and social media representations are often criticized for their lack of diversity and strong focus on Western, white, able-bodied, upper-class ciswomen. In this article, we expand on existing literature by focusing on creators’ self-representations under the #mixedgirlcheck on TikTok. The nomenclature of #mixedgirlcheck implies to present a different form of girlhood (‘mixed’) with the potential to subvert popular femininity. Through critical discourse analysis, we analysed 100 TikTok videos to answer our research question: ‘How do creators represent their identities in videos posted under the #mixedgirlcheck on TikTok?’. Our analysis revealed four prominent patterns in this trend: (1) the embodied performance of ‘mixed’ heritage, (2) negotiating embodied ruptures in normative authenticity and belonging, (3) embodied heterosexual performativity and the idealization of the bourgeois family and (4) capitalizing on the performance of embodied individuality. We discuss how TikTok's neoliberal platform logic rewards performances of the ‘mixed girl’ that cater to a white, heterosexual, cisgender dominant gaze, uncritical of discriminatory structures such as racism, sexism or heteronormativity. This paper contributes to platform studies by critically examining how TikTok's neoliberal platform logic shapes and rewards identity performances under #mixedgirlcheck, revealing both its reinforcement of dominant discriminatory structures and its affordances for momentary ruptures in hegemonic discourses on ‘mixed’ girlhood.