The word bimbo derives from the
Italian bimbo, a masculine-
gender term that means "little or baby boy" or "young (male) child" (the feminine form of the Italian word is
bimba). Use of this term began in the
United States as early as 1919, and was a slang word used to describe an unintelligent or brutish man. It was not until the 1920s that the term
bimbo began to be associated with women in popular culture. In 1920,
Frank Crumit,
Billy Jones, and
Aileen Stanley all recorded versions of "My Little Bimbo Down on the Bamboo Isle", with words by
Grant Clarke and music by
Walter Donaldson. The song uses the term "bimbo" to describe an island girl of questionable virtue. In the 1928
silent film The Godless Girl, an inmate in a girls'
reformatory addresses a new arrival as "Bimbo." In
Desert Nights (1929) it is used to describe a wealthy female
crook, and in
The Broadway Melody (1929), an angry
Bessie Love calls a
chorus girl a bimbo. The first use of its female meaning cited in the
Oxford English Dictionary is dated 1929, from the scholarly journal
American Speech, where the definition was given simply as "a woman". In the 1940s,
bimbo was still being used to refer to both men and women, as in, for example the comic novel
Full Moon by
P. G. Wodehouse who wrote of "bimbos who went about the place making passes at innocent girls after discarding their wives like old tubes of toothpaste". The term died out again for much of the 20th century until it became popular again in the 1980s and 1990s, with political sex scandals. As bimbo began to be used increasingly for females, exclusively male variations of the word began to surface, like mimbo and
himbo, which refers to an unintelligent, but attractive, man. "the woman most responsible for popularizing the idea of reclaiming hyper-femininity" in order to destigmatise women who are bimbos and to reclaim the term "bimbo". The term later re-entered usage by way of some members of
Generation Z seeking to further
reclaim the pejorative, such as the "BimboTok" community on the social media platform
TikTok, where users engaged in stereotypical hyper-femininity to satirise
consumerism,
capitalism, and
misogyny.
Vice contextualized the bimbo movement as a reaction against
girlboss feminism. The term is sometimes associated with men or women who dye their hair blond, indicating that physical attractiveness is more important to them than other, non-physical traits The expression was also used in a 2014 report in which
Colin Powell explained his reluctance to vote for
Hillary Clinton in light of her husband's continued affairs with "bimbos". After the first 2015 Republican Presidential Debate,
Donald Trump re-tweeted a message calling debate moderator and
Fox News host
Megyn Kelly a "bimbo" via
Twitter. This took place after Kelly asked Trump a question that referenced his television show
The Apprentice from season 6 in 2005. Shortly afterwards, Stephen Richter of
The Globalist published an opinion piece in which he accused Trump of being a bimbo, noting the original definition of bimbo as "an unintelligent or brutish male". In March 2024, the
California First Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the lower court's decision to deny a woman's request to change her name to Candi Bimbo Doll, marking a notable legal development in American jurisprudence related to 'bimbofication'. == Bimbofication ==