Does your boyfriend open the door for you? Pull out your chair before taking a seat himself at dinner? If you answered "yes," congrats! You have a gentleman on your hands. Yet, have you also experienced these things in addition to him paying for whatever your heart desires? In this scenario though, "him" refers to the guy you don't really like. Like, at all. Congrats, you apparently have a simp on your hands.

This weekend I watched a video by the Youtuber Jamari titled "The Definition of a Simp." Long story short, he basically refuted every point a blogger made about what attributes to a guy being a simp. According to Jamari, "...a simp is a spineless man who is desperately in love with the woman who will never love him back or show him any attention at all..." Then he went on to discuss perhaps the biggest simps of all: dudes infatuated with Gamer girls. In contrast, the blogger expressed that the word "simp" is mistakenly being used by other men to "...shame men who treat women well..."

This video really got me thinking. In 2020, I truly think most Gen Z'ers and Millennials are looking for "simps." After all, don't many of our favorite songs praise this idea of taking a man's coins, just to drop him in the end? I think the TikTok fave by BeatKing and Queendome explains it best, "..get that bread, get that head, then leave!" Just that song alone (in addition to Meg Thee Stallion's entire catalog) attests to the notion that the days of wanting a gentleman are gone. They are now replaced with the times of the simp.

With every lyric we sing about getting head, speaking English, Spanish, and French, we are glorifying being a simp. We are saying in order to be strong, powerful women we need weak, spineless men. Talk about flipping the narrative! However, this isn't female empowerment. Empowerment isn't tearing others down. It's about placing us all on equal, level playing ground. Empowered people empower people. Endorsing the ideology of being a simp isn't making women strong because it makes men (well, the men we pursue) appear weak; this in turn just adds fuel to the fire. After all, how can anyone, male, female, or in-between expect respect when we aren't giving it to others? Short answer: we can't.