If you’ve spent any time in X, which was Twitter, you know how it goes. Every few weeks, a spark ignites and what starts as a topic for one post quickly becomes a trend.
The catfish tomboy has been a hot topic lately. Catfish Tomboy has a real name, Hannah Barron, but I prefer Catfish Tomboy. Catfish Tomboy is a 27 year old woman living in Alabama. She has a cute chat and has her own TikTok account that she uses to document her life in the countryside and all her activities in the countryside, including wrestling catfish out of the river with her bare hands.
Humility is a way to prevent a future of devastating loneliness.
A video of Catfish’s tomboy helping her father with a construction project has sparked the ire of X power user Sameera Khan. Khan responded to the stomach-churning scene of a healthy young woman talking about the house she’s helping build, which she shared with her nearly 250,000 followers. She says, “American women are literally men.”
Opinions have been polarized, and Khan’s intentions, no doubt, have started a “debate” about the virtues and vices of Catfish’s tomboyishness and the rural Southerners she represents. By doing so, she continued to attract attention.
Although Khan may have questioned the influence of Namaz’s tomboyish femininity, many of her supporters were willing participants without any apparent benefit. One poster claimed that any man attracted to her must be gay.
Who is this giant creature they find offensive? Their reactions tell us little about Catfish’s tomboy — refreshingly adorable, family-oriented, and exuding a wholesome all-American charm. It says a lot about the landscape in which we live and seek love.
The courtship in 2024 will fail. Dating apps and social media have only exacerbated the mess left in the wake of the sexual revolution. Without any guidelines other than “agreement” and “satisfaction,” men and women wreak havoc on each other. Frustration leads to lashing out, which usually only leads to more confusion.
We crave traditional gender roles without fully understanding them. For many young men, this results in a narrow focus on the superficial trappings of femininity, especially as defined in the more brain-broken backwaters of the internet. That means you might miss all of Catfish’s tomboyish big appeal.
As with many discussions online, what’s missing here is humility. Those who review Catfish Tomboy can rest assured that they will not be reviewed in return. Therefore, they are free to subject her and others to the arbitrary and rigid standards currently prevalent.
Maybe it’s just trolling. But how we spend our time online has a way of seeping into our real lives. “High standards” can easily become an excuse to avoid meeting women altogether. How many commenters are rejecting the love of a cute tomboy who likes fishing with her father? I didn’t have the courage to even imagine it, let alone pursue it.
Humility is a way to prevent a future of devastating loneliness. If humility has any meaning, it means feeling like we are not good enough to accept the love bestowed upon us by decent, however imperfect, others.
This isn’t to say you shouldn’t have standards. That means these standards should be more tied to the real world, rather than the ephemeral opinions of online tastemakers. It also means that our standards should be tempered by an awareness of our own shortcomings and a deep sense of gratitude for the first decent person to love us.
In other words, our ideals of femininity, and for that matter masculinity, cannot be reduced to weapons wielded by fragile egos bent on winning online shaming wars. Rather, they should guide us to find a good mate and build a healthy family. Only when we can unite in this most “traditional” of all pursuits will the never-ending sex wars end.
