TikTok User Points Out the Deeper Meaning of the “Black Wife Effect” Trend

It’s no longer only a matter of fashion makeovers, TikTok @basicallybetsy2.Zero argued about the web trend.

May 7 2024, Published 6:20 p.m. ET

If you’ve come across videos from the “Black Wife Effect” trend on TikTok, you’ve observed Black TikTok customers showing off their white companions’ style evolutions — makeovers that are, possibly, a credit to the TikTokers themselves.

In one video, a person goes from wearing T-shirts and trucker hats to fitted button-downs and pea coats. In every other, a man gets a beard and a haircut that frames his face perfectly. In a third, a person ditches a L.L. Bean aesthetic for more of, say, a Hugo Boss vibe.

But one TikTok consumer explained how those videos in reality speak to a factor about how Black ladies’s contributions to society are significant however now not incessantly supported.

This TikTok consumer says Black ladies carry the whole thing — and “on a societal scale.”

A social media consumer named Betsy, who is going via the handle @basicallybetsy2.Zero on TikTok and lists they/them pronouns on Instagram, discusses the Black Wife Effect in a TikTok video that has gotten greater than 82,000 perspectives thus far. “I feel like there’s so much to break down about it,” Betsy says. “So for me, as I’m looking at the Black Wife Effect, what I’m pondering is that the whole lot that Black girls contact, they carry. And that’s now not simply on a partner scale, that’s on a societal scale.”

Betsy says that Black girls are at the basis of all social justice movements and at the best of all industries. “And that isn't any twist of fate,” they upload.

And now Black ladies are elevating their partners’ model sense. But it’s additionally more than that, Betsy points out. “I thought the interesting factor about the Black Wife Effect isn't even that they look better, their taste is best, however it’s additionally, like, you can visibly see their self belief get well, and that’s one thing that isn’t a bodily factor,” they say. “That’s one thing of, like, being properly cared for. I think like Black ladies have been socialized to be deep carers.”

But Black ladies may use fortify and no longer just appreciation, Betsy explains.

As the video is going on, Betsy says that Black girls are steadily put on a pedestal and that it’s “slightly bit onerous” having to move above and past all the time simply to be perceived as pretty, good, or kind. “That’s why when they exceed in these industries, when they exceed in these fields, once they exceed in those foundations, they do that as a result of the usual is, exceed or not exist.”

So the lesson of the “Black Wife Effect” shouldn’t be that white people can exploit and use Black ladies, Betsy concludes. Instead, white other folks can put in the work. “It should be, let me attempt to take notes so I can be on the same level, or let me see what they do this actually does it, you realize what I mean?” Betsy says. “Like, numerous times, folks can recognize what Black ladies do, however they don’t find out how to correctly toughen us to stay doing it.”

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