- “The Era of the Instagram Baddies”
Insta baddie
compounding noun
An ‘Insta baddie’ is a person on Instagram, usually female, who is seen as attractive and ‘cool’ by the people that follow them. The ‘Insta baddie’ stereotype is defined mainly as girls who post a lot of selfies and photos of themselves with a specific kind of makeup and hair and on-trend outfits. A synonym for ‘Insta baddie’ is the blend ‘Instamodel’, but some people consider these terms to mean different things. ‘Instamodel’ may be considered a more appropriate term for an Instagrammer who posts photos of themselves with the ultimate goal of being hired as a model for online advertisements. ‘Insta baddie’ may also be written as ‘Instagram baddie’, with ‘Instagram’ left un-clipped.
Etymology : The term ‘Insta baddie’ is a compounding of two other neologisms. ’Insta’ is a clipping of the social media platform Instagram, while ‘baddie’ is a derivation of ‘bad’ with the affix ‘ie’ added to make it a noun. A ‘baddie’ is a ‘bad person’ (usually ‘bad girl”) with ‘bad’ in this sense meaning ‘cool’. This meaning of ‘bad’ as ‘cool’ is an example of melioration. ‘Insta baddie’ became popular along with ‘Instamodel’ around 2016-2017. ‘Insta baddie’ was originally only used to refer to people on Instagram, but nowadays if someone is wearing a makeup look that is characteristic of ‘Insta baddies’ they may be referred to as one outside the platform. Being an ‘Insta baddie’ is considered desirable among many teenage girls, with search terms ‘insta baddie makeup’ and ‘insta baddie poses’ being very popular.
Source : Odyssey article, June 6th 2016
Last modified: 16 December 2019