Becky is a female nickname for Rebecca (a name found in the Old Testament of the Bible). In some areas of popular culture, the name is a pejorative Americanslang term for a youngwhite woman.[1] The term has come to be associated with a "white girl who lovesStarbucks andUggs"; for this reason, "Becky" is often associated with the slang term "basic", which has many similar connotations.[2]
In 2019, dictionary publisherMerriam-Webster wrote that "Becky" was "increasingly functioning as anepithet, and being used especially to refer to a white woman who is ignorant of both her privilege and her prejudice."[3] The term "Karen" has a similar connotation but is associated with older women.[4]
InUSA Today in 2016, Cara Kelly suggested that the term dates to the social climberBecky Sharp, protagonist ofWilliam Makepeace Thackeray's novelVanity Fair (1848) and the2004 film of the same name. InMark Twain's novelThe Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876),Tom Sawyer falls in love withBecky Thatcher, with her "yellow hair plaited into two long tails."[1] "Becky" is the title and subject of the fourth segment ofJean Toomer'sHarlem Renaissance novelCane (1923), about a white woman with two black sons.[5]Daphne du Maurier's novelRebecca (1938) features another woman "who will always be in a man's head", Kelly wrote.[1]
According toDamon Young inThe Root, the term denotes "a certain type of privileged young White woman who exists in a state of racial obliviousness that shifts from intentionally clueless to intentionally condescending".[7] The modern term, the "ur-Becky",[6] is thought to date toSir Mix-a-Lot's song "Baby Got Back" (1992), where one woman says to another: "Oh my God, Becky, look at her butt".[3] Both women are white and, according to Kelly, "mildly racist, as they do not understand the appeal of a woman's shapely posterior or wider definitions of beauty than their own. And thus adds the connotation that a Becky has a narrow, condescending world view, and we're graced with the idea of a 'dumb Becky'."[1]
In the song "Becky" (2009), the American rapperPlies used the term to refer tofellatio.[2]
Beyoncé's song "Sorry" (2016), from her albumLemonade, brought the term to wider attention.[1] "He only want me when I'm not there / He better call Becky with the good hair" appeared to refer to a white woman with whom the narrator's partner had had an affair.[8] "Good hair" refers within black communities to long, straight hair.[9]Karsonya Wise Whitehead, professor of African-American studies, offered two interpretations ofBecky: a woman the speaker does not respect, and a clueless white woman "who is kind of racist, [and] who makes statements without knowing what she's saying". Whitehead did not see the term as a racial slur, pointing out that the "good hair" part of the lyric was the more racially significant piece, referring to the idea that straight hair is preferable toAfro-textured hair.[10] The meaning settled on a young white woman, unaware of her racial and social privilege, who loves Starbucks and Uggs, and who might take photographs of herFrappuccino.[2]
"Becky"[11] by heavy metal band B.F. Raid, from the 2024 albumRaided Again,[12][13] explores racial and social dynamics through the story of a young Black man navigating predominantly white, racist neighborhoods inBoston to pursue relationships with white women. The song challenges societal and cultural barriers, highlighting themes of defiance, desire, and risk. The name "Becky," often used as a pejorative term for young white women, reinforces the racial undertones of the narrative. Lyrically, references to specific locations and the mention of "fourteen words"[14] suggest underlying racial tensions and the character’s resistance to imposed boundaries.
In 2017, Rebecca Tuvel, the author at the center of theHypatia transracialism controversy, was labelled aBecky by critics.[15] The following year, a white woman in California became known as "BBQ Becky" after calling the police because two African-American men were using acharcoal grill in a park.[16][17][18] In 2020 anedited volume,Surviving Becky(s): Pedagogies for Deconstructing Whiteness and Gender, examined what its editor, education professor Cheryl E. Matias, called the "increasing phenomenon ofBeckyism: the behaviors and rhetoric that Becky(s) engage in which uphold whiteness at the expense of people of color's humanity, dignity, and expertise".[19] Media-studies professor Aimée Morrison argues thatwhite supremacy makes whiteness invisible and that use of the termBecky thwarts this.[8]
It hasa different meaning in theincel community. They refer to attractive, sexually active women as "Stacys", less attractive sexually active women as "Beckys".[20][21]
The termKaren serves a similar function toBecky, with the added implication that a Karen is likely to engage in aggressive actions against people of color, such as asking to see a manager or calling the police. As media researcherMeredith Clark put it: "Karen has gone by different names."[4]
Scruggs, Charles; VanDemarr, Lee (1998).Jean Toomer and the Terrors of American History. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. p. 143.ISBN 0-8122-3451-0.
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