Tube Girl: An Act of Female Defiance

By Elida Silvey

It’s 6 p.m. and you’re on your way home from a busy day twirling in your office chair, dodging emails and expanding cells on your spreadsheets. You’re standing next to a cabin full of suited and booted men with their half-open brollies and bursting briefcases when out of the corner of your eye, you see a flick of hair and the unbridled joy of a girl on her phone. Sabrina Bahsoon is just that girl, the viral sensation otherwise known as Tube Girl. The typical Tube Girl, as made manifest by Bahsoon, is a girl who puts on her favourite song, best fit and winning smile to dance in the confined spaces of the London Tube. While Tube Girl, and her Tube Girlettes, will likely reserve their hair flicks and playlists for a weekend day, Bahsoon’s confidence in that initial August video has resulted in widespread tube-mania as women around the world dare to replicate her bold actions, as a conscious decision to take up space.

We’ve all had a moment where we’ve wanted to let ourselves go to the rhythm of a song in a public setting, do a little jig or lip sync as we do in the safety of our bedrooms. Having looked around, most of us feel the seemingly judgmental gaze of people in public, and so, we stop ourselves just shy of it. Our rooted sense of social respectability reminds us to pull back, to sit tight, to be quiet. This ingrained trait, learned from generations of a patriarchal-led society, prevents women from taking up the space that they need. Even saying this, my inherent statement would reduce it to space that is “needed”, without allowing myself to even consider my own desires. Tube Girl does that for us – she allows us to consider when we wish to take up space. Not just because we need it, but rather, because we feel like it.

Sabrina took the pinnacle of a confined space, the London Tube — right between the passenger doors fanned by gusts of wind sliding off the connecting carriage — to make her statement. As someone who has taken both the NYC subway and the London tube during peak rush hour, I need to make an important distinction. Unlike the subway, most of the tube lines are compact carriages with very little legroom between facing seats. The confinement of this space, which is altered visually by Sabrina in her use of the 0.5x feature on her iPhone tying her larger-than-life actions to her appearance, leads to an environment charged with tension and intimacy. To add insult to injury, British culture has a series of unspoken rules regarding the careful choreography of a train ride and other public spaces. Civil politeness prevents most conversations from blossoming in the carriages, at least, not without some subtle eye-rolling.

The proximity between passengers also feeds into the intimacy of the space, with wandering eyeballs mapping the crevices of the train or fixating on the font in the ads lining the cabin to stop themselves from landing on one another. Armpits may as well touch noses as knees graze knees. This tension is replicated to an exponential effect when we consider that Sabrina is not only a woman but also an immigrant, having moved to the UK to study Law at Durham University from Malaysia.

British culture is full of vibrant humour with a heavy dose of cheeky, self-depreciative allure that I’ve grown to cherish, what it lacks however, is the ability to see outward expressions of confidence in public as positive. Unlike American culture — where the individual is the pinnacle of society and their desire for success is granted with an active audience, no matter the location — British culture, on the contrary, has a time and a place attitude about outward acts of expression. This makes Sabrina’s bold videos, as an immigrant resident in the UK, more of a stance on desire than one imagines at first glance. While I’m not British myself and cannot say whether this sense of politeness is instantly ingrained into everyone’s minds, I can say I have felt myself adjusting to the colder attitudes and reserved nature of Londoners. Particularly when it comes to shared spaces such as sidewalks, parks and in the confinement of tube stations. Unlike my own, Sabrina’s actions aren’t the actions of an immigrant attempting to assimilate, but rather of an active participant, shaping the culture of the city she is a part of to include her.

Perhaps for this reason I find the OG Tube Girl so fascinating and her initial act one that I, and so many others, found inspiring. A lot of the backlash from this trend, and her copy-cat fans, stems from society’s relationship with women taking up space in such a brash manner. I'll admit, I wouldn’t like to be in the carriage on my way home while a Tube Girl-ette flips her hair in my face but I think it's a statement worth making. I’ve been stuck on enough train rides with men asserting their dominance over the available space for it not to be worth it. If the time comes when a strand is flicked my way I’ll have to accept it as a small sacrifice for the betterment of womankind.

BeReal by Elida Silvey

While my feelings for the Tube Girl trend as it unfolds in train stations around the world remains overwhelmingly positive, I found something about Sabrina Bahsoon's marketing of the viral trend to feel a bit less Joan of Arc-esque. I struggle at times with the idea that everything online eventually ends up becoming a marketing ploy used to sell us something we may not even want. I also recognize the need for money to live, so why shouldn’t it come from something you’ve created yourself?

Following the unprecedented success of the Barbie movie, the female dollar is proven to be more valuable than ever before and as a result, we’re beginning to see how girlhood is monetized in viral acts of feminism. Sabrina’s initial video may have come about with the idea to monetize herself from the start but is that really so bad in a world where money is king? Sabrina set herself up with the perfect template for successful content, by replicating the Tube Girl action with a host of potential patrons, even going as far as appearing with them — such as with Troye Sivan — she is guaranteed a likable, sellable video.

The precarity of social media gives complexity to this trend in a way that cannot be answered by a series of musings from a single writer, who frankly, isn’t quite sure where she stands on all of it. That said, I’d like to believe that Sabrina’s Tube Girl moment, and subsequent videos, are an act of defiance to the status quo and the monetization of its virality is nothing more than the tool with which to spread the word of girl. ♦