During the Fancam Assembly sketch on Saturday Night Live, Pedro Pascal’s character said this; a pretty solid summary of how TikTok sees its babygirls. To understand what a babygirl is within the TikTok spectrum, we must first look back on the idea of the Tumblr Sexyman.
The Tumblr Sexyman is believed to have started with the release of the Lorax movie, according to The Mary Sue. Their article on Tumblr Sexymen says that what makes a character a sexyman lies between being evil or a series of unique traits that separate them from being “normal”.
In this case, as said by this Kotaku article about Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II’s Ghost, babygirls would be the TikTok equivalent to the Tumblr Sexymen. It’s really all about people uniting over the obsession of a character and hence, making sparkly, romantic edits, or fanart of them. But why bother dissecting this trope in the first place, right? Keep reading to find out!
How did I find out about the babygirlification phenomenon?
My TikTok For You Page bombarded me with edits of Simon “Ghost” Riley, which was how I found out about babygirlfication in the first place. See exhibit A.
There was also the increase in ship edits and fanart of Ghost with his teammate, Johnny “Soap” MacTavish. Has this made me like plenty of videos regarding this reboot of Modern Warfare? Yes. Have I followed accounts solely because they make incredible art for GhostSoap? Also yes. Has it caused me to watch nearly five hours of campaign gameplay just to understand the context of these boys? You guessed it. I blame TikTok for my attachment to the grumpy Englishman and the sassy Scottish man.
Of course, this is not limited to just Call of Duty. As exemplified by Pedro Pascal, real people can be babygirls as well. While it could be argued that he is not a babygirl because he said, “… But daddy is a state of mind, you know what I’m saying? I’m your daddy.” (among other things), I find him to be quite babygirl, but it’s just my perception of this lovely man.
Can babygirlification happen to anyone?
Absolutely! If the right criteria is met, just about any character or IRL person can become babygirl!
Are there downsides to making a character babygirl?
As seen in the example of Ghost, intense fans within a fandom will most likely get upset if a single character from a piece of media is getting a lot of hype for seemingly superficial reasons. They’ll say that the character is being ‘sexualized’ and that there is no real regard for the source material.
However, I find this argument to be pretty pointless. Sure, there isn’t widespread knowledge about lore to everything, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Personally, I’ve never really had an affinity or even a liking for video games. Yet, I was compelled to watch almost five hours of gameplay because I wanted to learn more about these characters I found and grew fond of. This means that I was exposed to media I never would’ve had an interest in if I hadn’t seen Ghost fancams. I got a new character to enjoy and got to understand the context he’s from. I’d say that’s pretty cool, die-hard CoD fans. We respect opinions in this house, dear reader! So, go, and find your babygirls as I have!