Walking around in yoga pants, hair in a messy bun, eyebrows on fleek and Starbucks in hand, any girl would labeled as “basic” right off the bat. But please, for the love of all things just, let’s eliminate this label from our vocabulary

“Basic” has spread through our vernacular similar to LOL and JK, at first as a joke, and then it became so ingrained in our minds that it slipped into every sentence.

It’s fun, it’s casual, and it’s making fun of a large portion of the population for no valid reason.

New York Magazine worded it perfectly when it said, “Basic rolls beautifully off the tongue. It’s a useful insult. Like trashy or gauche, it derives its power from the knowledge that if you can recognize someone or something as basic, you probably, yourself, aren’t it.”

Basic is another way to divide oneself from others, to assert a social hierarchy, and a way to turn girls and women against one another.

The term just means someone is into the latest trends, and the unforgivable indulges in them. The problem with this is that it attacks women, especially young girls in middle and high school, for the very things that are being marketed at them.

In the first 15 images to pop up on the “Uggs” Google search, only three have men in them. Most of them are, admittedly, white women in trendy clothing hugging their boots.

And with about 5,000 similar ads being thrown at these young women each day, it’s no wonder they’re giving into the trends.

These “basic” girls are being criticized for adapting to the culture around them. So what?

Boys aren’t criticized like this for wearing backwards hats, or all getting pickup trucks, or for wearing polos with khaki pants and calling it “dressy.” No matter how prevalent these trends are at ACU, no one seems to point that out to the men on campus.

So next to the next person who looks at a woman in the Starbucks line and feels “basic” about to roll off their tongue, please stop and figure out why that’s a temptation.