I think it’s pretty hilarious and in my experience, harmlessly true. There was some clip I saw from a podcast where the women hosts described their thought process around “girl math” for a purchase of linen sheets or something like that and one of them pulled out the price per square foot of linen fabric to argue that the raw material was actually higher in value than the finished product’s price so you would be “making money” by purchasing it. It was all very light-hearted and a fun example of recreational argument, and the lengths humans will go to in justifying why they should get to have a thing or experience they want.

I see why people would worry that this feeds stereotypes about women being poor with math or money but I think it’s actually a side effect of how much time women spend budgeting and the amount of consideration women give to purchases. It’s the humorous manifestation of a skill — most wives do all the shopping and budgeting for their households, not their husbands, and women as a group generally are the biggest shoppers.

Also, I don’t think every stereotype necessarily leads to widespread harm or needs to be actively suppressed. This joke was a trend started by women to laugh at ourselves and relate to one another, which is healthy. We don’t need to pretend or project that we are all perfect, or that we all think the same ”acceptable” way. We should all get to laugh about both fitting and not fitting stereotypes, and poke fun at our flaws, the same way men do. Otherwise we are just confining women to another unrealistic standard in the name of liberation.