[1 DEFINITION]
Femcel: /femˌsel/ noun
A woman belonging to the chronically online community of posters and girlbloggers known as Femcels. Thriving in highly insulated and self-referential Insta pages of varying sizes, they spend their days bedrotting. Editing compilations of their favorite Gone Girl scenes while listening to Lana del Ray and Mitski on repeat. Their memes express what they love about womanhood, the creativity and camaraderie. The myriad means to express and celebrate their own unique inner worlds. Their memes express what they hate about womanhood, the spectacle, the performance. The consumption of their bodies and the demanded repression of their emotions. Femcel heroes include Cassie Howard from Euphoria, Amy Dunne of Gone Girl, Kendall Roy from Succession and Patrick Bateman of American Psycho. Femcels reject the binary symbols presented to modern women by two more popular chronically online female symbols, the Girlboss and the Tradwife. One representing self-sacrifice for professional advancement, the other a self-sacrifice for comfortable tradition. The Femcel self-identifies and exists in her own third space where she is safe from the world, her neuroses are accepted, and she is surrounded by understanding friends.
[2 A SHORT HISTORY OF FEMCELS]
In 1997, a woman known by only her first name, Alana, coined the term “incel” - newspeak for an involuntarily celebate person - on an Internet mailing list. Today, the word has become associated with alt-right adjacent young men who base their sense of self on a supposed inability to get laid, but this was not always the case. Alana used the term to describe a person of any gender and sexuality who had issues with relationships due to factors beyond their control such as social awkwardness and unrealistic beauty standards.
After “incel” was appropriated by men, the term “Femcel” emerged as a way to apply the original intent to the unique female experience. While Femcels of the involuntarily celibate nature still do exist, they are overshadowed by the modern Femcel movement on apps like Instagram.
These new Femcels may be more socially successful than their predecessors, but they take to the term as it gives voice to their own feelings of repression and isolation. There remains a great appreciation for the original Femcel as a symbol among the newcomers. Something about the image of a depressed woman, her legs unshaven, dressed in underwear and an oversized t-shirt, on her third day of binging Gossip Girl in bed, appeals to this new generation. She represents an escape into a femininity that seemed more real and genuine.
In addition, these new Femcels add another layer: a dream that this woman would inevitably rise from bed and return to the world as an icon of female power made beautiful from her rest… An It Girl Renaissance following a year of rest and relaxation.
[3 ANATOMY OF A FEMCEL POST]
Femcel memes are as diverse as any niche meme community secreted in the shadowy corners of Instagram. The most common genre of Femcel meme, however, is relatively simple and consists of two layers—the background and the caption. Like Haiku, this simplicity allows a post to articulate its symbology and emotion more expressively than literally. Backgrounds are not always static images; they sometimes consist of highly edited compilations of short TV and movie moments. These common symbols, however, are recurring across mediums.
[3A THE BACKGROUND]
Femcel memes will usually feature a static image as a backdrop, with a lowered opacity to create a darker canvas for the foreground text. Some examples of commonly used images (see below):
[3A THE CAPTION]
Femcel memes are word-heavy and focus on the caption. The text is often directly centered, though sometimes placed near the top or bottom of the images. Below are a series of captions that are particularly evocative of the sentiment generally produced, “Me core” (a variation on “Literally Me”), as applied by genre creators.
“My need to be desired has led me places I wouldn’t go without a gun.”
Posted November 17, 2022, by @plathcellectuals
“Girls when Marie Antoinette’s last words were an apology to her executor for stepping on his shoe.”
Posted March 28, 2023, by @inzanelyrejected_denied
“I’m God’s most slaughterable lamb.”
Posted April 2, 2023 by @catgirlhannibal
“They hate to see a girlweirdo creeping.”
Posted December 15, 2022 by @catgirlhannibal
“Me when a male makes a joke.”
Posted November 14, 2022 by @stargirlxd
[4 COMMUNICATION WITH FEMCELS]
Femcels communicate via a complex network of:
- interwoven references
- meme captions
- quotes
- cultural assumptions
While a fuller explanation of their language is beyond the scope of this primer, any extensive perusal of Femcel content and its inspirations will provide the curious with the tools needed for effective communication.
What cannot be so easily taught, however, is the foundational essence of a Femcel post. That is, how to create content that will resonate with the community. Vulnerability is at the core of communicating with Femcels.
Beyond the fundamentals elucidated in Section 3, a sharp observation of the contemporary female experience and the willingness to be vulnerable are absolutely required. While the captions and images discussed are cloaked by protective layers of irony and absurdist comedy, they are expressive of deeply intimate experiences many women relate to. The need to be desired, the feeling of being a sacrifice for others’ wants and needs, etc. Even when dressed in comedy and made anonymous by the Internet, these experiences constitute profoundly vivid emotional content many women deal with daily.
Any attempt at communication with Femcels must have this element of naked relatability or it will be rejected. Femcels are not opposed to beauty or consumption; in fact, quite the opposite. But other than these posts, they may feel they have few outlets for these feelings of weakness and dreams for the future.
An influencer or brand willing to take this dive into vulnerability would likely be as welcomed as any other.
[5 THE FEMCEL CANON]
Film
Possession (1983, dir. Andrzej Żuławski)
The Virgin Suicides (1993 dir. Sofia Coppola)
American Psycho (2000, dir. Mary Harron)
Marie Antoinette (2006 dir. Sofia Coppola)
Jennifer’s Body (2009 dir. Karyn Kusama)
Gone Girl (2014, dir. David Fincher)
Pearl (2022, dir. Ti West)
Literature
My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Emma by Jane Austen
A Critical Selection of Meme Pages
Scarlett Eller is an engineer at Fohr and the best Femcel on the entire gd World Wide Web. She has fully emerged from the cocoon and is currently in her It Girl Renaissance era.
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