Slime: Rise to Fame & its effect on girlhood

By: avery hager

Slime, a gooey moldable substance, is known for its aesthetics and satisfying properties, as evidenced by its ASMR clicks, pops, and cracks. It is made as a DIY craft using glue and borax, a cleaning tool found in most homes. Slime can be dressed up with different add-ins like food coloring, glitter, shaving cream, and clay.

Slime's appeal to young girls gave it an immense amount of popularity during the years 2016-2018, a time when social media was all the rage. Social media had a rapid impact on people's views of slime, challenging the idea that it was gross and scary. Instead, it was aesthetic, cute, and girly, causing girls to go into a craze over slime, making it a significant role in girlhood.

During 2016, social media experienced a large culture shift. Before, social media like Facebook was used to share personal experiences with friends and family. The introduction to other apps changed the way social media was used. Instead of personal content, it shifts to posting memes, current trends, and even political debates with people no longer known in real life.

Meme culture had risen to an extreme popularity. One of the most influential changes was Musically, a lip-syncing app popular from the years 2013-2015, rebranded as the well-known app TikTok. The focus of the app was no longer on lip-syncing videos; it became a large platform on which people could share anything. This led to a boost in videos related to current trends, as the content was no longer limited to just lip-syncing

Before this culture shift, slime was seen as something gross and scary. An article written by Esther Leslie, Slime, goes into the differences between how her generation saw slime compared to how her daughters' generation viewed slime. "Slime is a contradictory thing. It generates the Y uck Factor, under certain circumstances, if it possesses specific aesthetic qualities, while also being, under other circumstances, and displaying other aesthetic qualities, a desired substance for touching." (Leslie, 2021, Pg. 170) The vast difference between their views shows the rapid switch in how slime evolved and changed compared to before social media and after. Before, slime was only pictured in horror movies or as a booger. Social media trends allowed slime to change from something disgusting to something highly sought after and seen as an aesthetic.

Slimes change from being seen as something disgusting to highly sought after shows its entrance to girlhood. Gender stereotypes like girls have to stay proper and not play with gross things such as slime, but boys can play a significant role in the shift.

Slimes popularity allowed for content creators to produce more content based on slime challenges, making slime, and playing with slime. As well as creating their own brand and making different slime based products.

Content Creator Karina Garcia was interviewed by researcher Claire Martin, who used their conversation to write the academic article "Feel the Noise: Homemade Slime Becomes Big Business." Creator Karina Garcia talks about the impact slime content creation had on her life. ""There are times when it's $200,000 in a really good month," Ms. Garcia said. In March, she bought a six-bedroom house in Riverside, Calif. "I've retired my parents," Ms. Garcia said. "It's definitely really crazy." She's also capitalizing on the trend by developing a line of DIY slime kits and writing a recipe book: "Karina Garcia's D.I.Y . Slime." (Martin, 2017). Slime has allowed her to run a large woman-owned business. As slime is marketed towards girls, it has provided a multitude of opportunities for female content creators like Karina to grow and expand their business, Empowering and allowing women in the content creation space to thrive.

Also interviewed alongside content creator Karina Garcia was 10-year-old Goldie Bronson, "Goldie and a friend have been mixing slime at home and selling it to their schoolmates. Most of their customers are in fourth, fifth and sixth grades. "We ask them if they want it fluffy or stretchy," Goldie said, adding that they have a strict policy of fulfilling the orders within one or two days. "It's like Amazon Prime." She estimates that they have sold 30 slimes, at $5 each. For larger slimes, they charge $10; for a gallon, it's $25. They have yet to close a gallon-size deal." (Martin, 2017). Y oung girls took slime-making very seriously, using it to model adult situations and real jobs. This also can be explained as expressing themselves through play, which is a crucial part of girlhood.

It also had its academic purposes, before It became a trend on social media. Slime and putty were often used as tools for children's physical and occupational therapy. Slime was an efficient way for children to work on their fine motor skills. According to the article "Slime Bash Social; A Tactile Manipulative for Child and Y outh Play" "By touching and moving the slime into various shapes, sizes and configurations, tactical sensory play is encouraged. For example, slime not only stimulates one's tactile sensory patterns, but also one's visual and other senses" (Levingston et al., 2019, p. 53).

As one of the many layers of slime, femininity plays a large role. The pink colors and girly themes provided a separation between slime users. "As outlined earlier, gender as a concept has relevance for children's identities and childhood as a whole. Gender also plays an important role in children's lives as an axis of social inequality, resulting in particular Gendered Experiences, Opportunities, And outcomes" (Kustatscher, 2020, Pg. 4). The strict gender roles slime placed on young children enforced an understanding for girls that femininity was best expressed through making slimes girly, pink, glittery, and pretty. This caused a separation between the understanding slime was disgusting and for boys to now slime is girly, pretty, and satisfying.

Slime brings up the fascinating topic of how play ties into girlhood. The Article "Pop into The Bedroom" by Sarah Louise Baker goes into the importance of play. "Play is particularly serious because it is through play that identities are negotiated, represented, and constituted" (Baker, 2004, p. 88). Slime "shops" and Instagram accounts young girls make for their slime creations provide play where these girls can take on roles. The importance of this is allowing the girls to express who they want to be in their play space. Providing them with growth as they go through girlhood.

Girls also used slime for dark play. Dark play is "'solitary activities' that people 'are cautious about sharing' (1995: 38). It involves: sneaking off, not being recognized, playing out selves that cannot be displayed at work, or with family" (Baker, 2004, p. 88). As slime was commonly frowned upon by parents due to the mess it caused and the harmful chemicals in it, girls were often not allowed to have it in their homes. So, sneaking off to join the current craze when they knew they were not allowed constitutes for dark play

The article "Girlhood" written by Jennifer Helgren talks about girlhood and girl culture. "The study of girlhood examines the process of how girl children adapt to their culture's understanding of girlhood and how they perform it." (Helgren, 2020, p. 841). Girls used slime to perform girlhood culture in a variety of different ways. Including stereotypes like "Mean girls," "Artsy Girls," and "Popular girls."

Slimes' intense popularity had an enormous impact on girlhood. The extreme demand for slime gave it a specific power over girls. It created a hierarchy of whoever had the best slimes, and the most creative ingredients were running the playground with their newfound slime popularity. This created an exclusion of girls whose families needed more disposable income to spend on slime and its vast array of ingredients. "The study of girlhood examines the process of how girl children adapt to their culture's understanding of girlhood and how they perform it." (Helgren, 2020, p. 841). The idea of family income and the total cost of slime-making is not a common thought coming from a middle school-aged girls. Examining the behavior of girls and how they treated peers based on materialistic items like slime shows the lack of cultural understanding.

Overall, social media made slime desirable by changing the world's outlook on it by using cute colors, good-smelling scents, cute add-ins, and ASMR videos from Slime Play. This not only led to slime's popularity but provided content creators with an opportunity to start and grow their own businesses, as the trend not only provided content to post but something to sell. Leading to more business growth. This was only able to happen because of the popularity of social media at the time, due to the shift faced in 2016 with the introduction of TikTok, and the large meme culture of the time promoting social media use.

Slimes' influence on girlhood is seen in a multitude of ways. Using slime, trading, selling, and making are all different forms of play, which is a significant part of girlhood. Play and dark play with slime allowed the girls to express who they wanted to be, which is why play is so important. The rolls of slime are assigned to girls, whether that be one who has all the best slimes and shops or the girl who doesn't own any slime and can't make it either. The separation without girls thinking of the reason why shows their understanding of their surrounding culture. Social media had a rapid impact on people's views of slime, challenging the idea that it was gross and scary, but instead, it was aesthetic, cute, and girly, causing girls to go into a craze over slime, making it a significant role in girlhood.

Works Cited

Levingston , J. A., Adebiyi, M. E., Hadley , B., Al-Hassan , Y ., Back , D., Cook, M., & Edginton , C. R. (2019). Slime Bash Social: A Tactile Manipulative for Child and Y outh Play. Journal of STEM Arts, Crafts, and Constructions , 4(1), 52–62.

Leslie, E. (2021). Slime. Matter: Journal of New Materialist Research, 2(2), 170–174. https://doi.org/10.1344/jnmr.v2i2.35900

Martin, C. (2017, June 23). Feel the Noise: Homemade Slime Becomes Big Business. International New York Times, NA.

Helgren, J. (2020a). Girlhood. The SAGE Encyclopedia of Children and Childhood Studies , 841–845. https://doi.org/10.36019/9780813549460

Kustatscher, M. (2020). The sage encyclopedia of children and childhood studies. volume 4. Sage Publications, Inc.

Baker, S. L. (2004). Pop In(To) the bedroom. European Journal of Cultural Studies, 7(1), 75–93. https://doi.org/10.1177/1367549404039861