Re: Smol Bean
in which I attempt to define
The first time I recall coming across the term smol-bean was in Virginia Karnstein’s post-femcel series, wherein she quotes Phoebe Maltz Bovy’s definition and expounds:
Being just a girl means giving up, acknowledging defeat, and excusing surrender by claiming—more or less implicitly—to be a smol bean. As Phoebe Maltz Bovy explains:
“What is smol bean? [...] It’s a certain stance, a way of presenting oneself as the tender, gentle, too-delicate-for-this-world party in interactions. The other people are the meanies.”
A smol bean who’s just a girl is never to blame for her misdeeds, including in social interactions, but also in all areas of life. Inability to manage finances, inability to find purpose, and so on; these are the properties of a girl, in this framework. I assume she can’t throw well anymore, either. Learned helplessness serves as a moral shield.
Despite the clarity of these paragraphs, however, I walked away from that essay interpreting smol bean as “cute-and-adorably-helpless-and-should-be-protected-at-all-costs”. How I did this is a bit of a mystery to me.
It was a little jarring, therefore, to my “smol bean = precious squish” self, to run into Phoebe’s definition (again) in her essay Smol bean. . . see above.
But I did get a little indignant. How can a term that inspires deep feelings of affection and protectiveness in my melodramatic soul actually mean the exact opposite?
The logical next step was to do some amateur sleuthing, so I fired up google and begged for clarity.
It turns out that I wasn’t 100% wrong. In fact, I was actually right. But so was Ms. Bovy and Ms. Karnstein. It all depends on your context.
Smol bean appears to have originated in fandom spaces and memes, where it meant (yep, you guessed it): tiny and cute, innocent and adorable, and was typically used in reference to characters, animals and objects1 2. It functioned not only to modify the noun, but the entire mood of the statement being made. It moved the idea of something being small as a statement of fact, to a usage of small which carried emotional weight in itself. Small as playful, affectionate and childlike3. Smol.
So, why the disparity?
Fast Slang, while offering the fandom-related definition, further clarifies that while some use smol affectionately, others find it offensive and suggest that it infantilizes the subject. This means that the term can be used both playfully, and sarcastically. Smol bean can be used to indicate the preciousness of something or else to condemn a rejection of responsibility and accountability.
One usage rooted within fandom language, the other used with irony as critique. It is this second usage that better falls in line with the definitions offered by Phoebe Maltz Bovy and Virginia Karnstein.
It depends on the context of use. If you're using it to avoid taking responsibility, it's disgusting. If you're being cute, it's precious.
Now I wonder if I'm a smol bean