A “Young Hoe’s” Diary to Adulthood
On X (formerly Twitter), user Bean_____1 said, “young hoes cook everything on high,” and the post sparked a popular trend among TikTok users sharing their experiences identifying as a “young hoe” by tweaking the action of the sentence. This trend, although its exact start is debated, has become a larger part of Gen Z identity and has evolved since Bean____1’s initial post. Originally, the discourse community consisted (directed towards) of only young Black women and eventually grew to encompass most, if not all, identities of Black Gen Z. This trend, originating in critiquing young women’s transition into adulthood, has now become a digital discourse illustrating all of Gen Z’s transition into adulthood. The “young hoe” trend demonstrates how social media reclaims and transforms stereotypes and derogatory language into communal identities, particularly as individuals across the range of Gen Z identities begin to recognize themselves within the joke.
Literature Review
This study will employ several rhetorical strategies and methodologies outlined by various researchers that will guide the analysis of the collected data.
Discourse Communities
English Linguistics John M. Swales defines the term discourse, which will be used throughout the study. According to Swales, a discourse community is “a group of people who share a set of discourses, understood as basic values and assumptions, and ways of communicating about their goals” (2017, 3). Swales continued to define three types of discourse communities, the two most relevant to the study being local and folocal discourse communities. These theories of discourse communities will be used to define the ideals of the “young hoe” discourse community.
Contact Zones
Mary Louise Pratt, theorist and linguist, defines contact zones in a journal article titled, “Art of the Contact Zone,” in which she says contact zones are “social spaces where cultures
meet, clash, and grapple with each other, often in contexts of highly asymmetrical relations of power, such as colonialism, slavery, or their aftermaths as they are lived out…” (1991, 3). In the article, Pratt highlights that where people communicate and collide in history, language, identity, and more, producing new ideals and transformation. The theory of contact zones will be employed during the study to understand power dynamics within the social media trend and setting.
Safe Houses
In the same article, Pratt also outlines the definition of a safe house, which is “ social and intellectual spaces where groups can constitute themselves as horizontal, homogeneous, sovereign communities with high degrees of trust, shared understandings, temporary protection from legacies of oppression” (1991, 9). Pratt defines these spaces as those with shared power, identities, and histories operating on the same discourse norms. The theory of safe houses will be used during this study to understand why the “young hoe” discourse community has become so popular.
Method
For this study, to truly understand the full scope of the social media trend, the methodology will be divided into four sub-categories: field sites, data collection, analytic organization, and researcher positions. This process ensures detailed coverage of the social media trend, public reaction, and acknowledgement of the researcher's relationship to the trend.
Field Sites
As established, a discourse community is a group of people who have a purpose and use communication to achieve it. Social media, according to Swales' studies, can be defined as a folocal discourse community, “hybrid communities whose members have a double—and sometimes split—allegiance, as they are confronted by internal and external challenges and pressures.” Members of social media platforms are connected virtually through shared interests and goals, and can be a part of many subcategories of discourse contained within each social network. For example, makeup artists on TikTok can create a local community containing their own set of goals, interests, and methods of communication. It is also important to note that social media is not only as local and folocal discourses, but also as both contact zones and safe houses according to Pratt. These specific communities have their own “virtual spaces” through algorithms; however, they may come into contact with conflicting communities.
In this study, TikTok, Instagram, and X will be acknowledged as folocal communities and their local communities of “young hoe” discourse will be analyzed as a local community. This will consist of both visual and written communication, including videos, X posts, comments, stitches, and more. This communication will be between Nov. 11, 2025, the time of the original “young hoe” post, and Feb. 25, the conclusion of the observational period.
Data Collection
For data collection of the discourse communities, I observed 35 posts and videos from TikTok, Instagram, and X. These posts were selected according to the timeframe, engagement, and hashtags. After the content was selected, the platform, the “young hoe theory,” username, gender, age, and the link to the online commentary were documented in a spreadsheet.
Interviews were conducted in both individual and group formats to facilitate honest conversation and thoughts about the social media trend. Interviews were conducted with the interviewee acting as the leader and the interviewer as an active listener. Interviews were conducted with people who were already aware, familiar, and had interacted with the trend by either liking, commenting, sharing, or reposting content.
Analytic Organization
After the data was collected, it was organized according to leading themes such as cooking, self-identification, and/or gendered language. While interacting with the data, iterative reading and strategic contemplation were employed to develop a deeper understanding and nuanced analysis.
Researcher Positionality
Before presenting the findings, I find it imperative to acknowledge my relationship with the trend itself as a Gen Z woman in the name of self-reflexivity. I am not a strong, active participant in online Gen Z spaces, other than liking and sharing. However, I am interested in Gen Z’s progression into adulthood and how their lived experiences (specifically major historical phenomena) affect how they perceive themselves and life around them. Being a Gen Z woman has given me an easier entrance to observe rather intimate conversations regarding aging, race, and gender during this study. I can acknowledge that my positionality has influenced this study to a certain extent.
Analysis
The “young hoe” trend, most prominent on TikTok, is a direct cultural archive of Gen Z beginning to navigate adulthood. As previously mentioned, the “young hoe” trend initially began with the post “young hoes cook everything on high,” originally critiquing young women for not knowing how to “adult”, being immature, and living a “soft life.” A lot of viewers thought it was funny for this reason; one male user commented, “You gotta teach em patience, in everything,” and another female user commented, “I be in a rush.” The comments overall positive and making additional responses to the tweets and eventually it spread to TikTok where social media creators, initially mostly women, started recreating the famous tweet. User @olgaqueefs posted on TikTok a video of a car surrounded by snow plowing itself out by repeatedly reversing with the caption, "Young Hoes don't shovel.” A commenter, user @thetazepa5w stated, "Bc YOUNG MEN should be shoveling, why we keep getting blamed. As a young yo you should NEVER be shoveling" passing the responsibility of physical labor to the male gender. In this initial contact zone between male and female discourse comments, each comment was complacent with the norm gender roles, placing men as more capable than women, and the use of derogatory language towards them.
Gender Transition
Naturally, young hoe does have a feminine connotation, and from the comments on the original tweet, it was taken as such. An interview participant, 18-years old, stated, “No, I’m not a young hoe. I’m an organized hoe. Yes, I do associate with some young hoe things, but I’m a conscious young hoe … and it makes me realize that none of my experiences are unique.” Clearly, identifying as a “young hoe” in the discourse does not seem to be a shameful experience, but rather one of collective experience.
Although every gender can be a “young hoe” because men started to see themselves within the trend as well. User @ceosain reflected on this in a video on TikTok, “Am I a young hoe? Because everything so far seems to be applying to me,” he said. The comments were filled with both men and women relating to the post, and finding shared comfort in that most of them are indeed “young hoes.” One user responded, “It’s okay, your one of us now.” At this point, the trend became less about criticizing women for being childish and unprepared for adulthood, but rather a shared experience of noting the struggles of transitioning into adulthood as a whole. In a round table discussion about the concept of the trend, one interviewee stated, “I think it is us growing up into adults. I think it is like the quarter-zip trend cause you are not about to wear a Nike Tech [suit] to a job. You’re going to wear a quarter-zip.”
As @ceosain’s post began to gain more traction through comments, reposts, comments, stitches, and likes, that was when the algorithm (the controller of who is shown a certain folocal group in social media discourses) started opening the doors to male-presenting figures into the trend. In turn, widening the audience and the discourse community and altering the rules of what it means to be a “young hoe” from “immature young women” to “immature young people.” In the same round table discussion, an interviewee said:
“I feel like the young hoe things start as something being like demeaning towards women because it started from this old lady being, like, “young girls cook anything on high,” which is true, but it's because she's trying to be demeaning towards only women. But then people just ran with it and made it its own thing, like things that we do, that we know are not necessarily good. Like always having your car on “E.”
Combating Stereotypes
The “young hoe” trend goes even further than disproving gender roles and stereotypes in the Gen Z community, also disapproving of some stereotypes of women. User @teodoracordial posted a TikTok with the comment, "bringing my kid to every function [because] yes I am a mom but I am also a young ho," prompting a viewer to comment “[The] patriarchy has done so much damage by making it seem like being a single mother is impossible without the help of a man…seeing single mothers on tiktok taking good care of their child while still having fun, it healed something within me about motherhood.” The depiction of a mother doing something that is looked down upon by the older generation, such as participating in nightlife, breaks the stereotype that a woman can not have fun and be a single mother.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the “young hoe” trend is a collection of Gen Zs learning to navigate adulthood in an age where everything is changing. The discourse of the “young hoe” is directly functioning as a social action gathering thousands, if not millions, of young adults in a digital space as they establish their identities as adults. The trend expands more than just forming a community around shared experience, but also in-depth conversation on what led to the lack of leadership that created the “young hoe.”
Pratt, M. L. (1991). Arts of the Contact Zone. Profession, 33-40. https://www.jstor.org/stable/25595469?seq=1
Swales, J. M. (2017). The Concept of Discourse Community: Some Recent Personal History. Composition Forum, Fall 2017(37), 11. https://compositionforum.com/issue/37/swales-retrospective.php
