Basic

Basic (pronounced bey-sik)

(1) Of, relating to, or forming a base; fundamental.

(2) In chemistry, pertaining to, of the nature of, or containing a base; alkaline.

(3) In metallurgy, noting, pertaining to, or made by a steelmaking process (basic process) in which the furnace or converter is lined with a basic or non-siliceous material, mainly burned magnesite and a small amount of ground basic slag, to remove impurities from the steel.

(4) In geology, descriptor of a rock having relatively little silica.

(5) In military use, the lowest or initial form of anything (chiefly US).

(6) In popular culture, the adjectival part of a slang term for a sub-set of females characterized by predictable or unoriginal style, interests, or behavior.

(7) Of things elementary in character, essential, key, primary, basal, underlying.

(8) As a computer industry acronym, (BASIC and its forks, QBASIC, BASICA et al), a long-lived programming language: B(eginner's) A(ll-purpose) S(ymbolic) I(nstruction) C(ode).

1832:  Originally from chemistry (base + ic) and adopted by about every other field.  The programming language was created in 1964 by Hungarian-born US-based computer scientist John Kemeny (1926-1992) and US computer scientist Thomas Kurtz (b 1928).  Use to describe a female sub-set dates from 2005.

The Basic Bitch

Basic bitch, often truncated to the (sometimes affectionate) "basic", is a US pop-culture term.  Although use outgrew its origins, it was intended as a pejorative descriptor of white, middle class females with boringly predictable, mainstream tastes in consumer goods and culture.  Variously interpreted as a variation on the earlier airhead, a general expression of misogyny and another unsuccessful attempt to invent a term white people would find offensive, basic bitch briefly generated a sizable critique.  Although expressions of disapproval of hollow consumer culture had became common even before publication of JK Galbraith's (1908–2006) The Affluent Society (1958) made it a bit of a thing, basic bitch seemingly offended just about all the usual suspects in the grievance industry.

Feminists found it misogynistic and weren’t at mollified by the emergence of a term of male equivalence, their general position probably demanding the dismissal of all cultural feminine signifiers.  To them, the specifics were tiresomely irrelevant; basic bitch was just another way to demean women.  The left generally agreed, arguing it was unhelpful to target a stereotype of late capitalist femininity rather than adhere to their critique of consumer culture.  Western capitalism, neutral on the squabble, soon commodified:

Less predictable was the race-based criticism.  Basic bitch was considered yet another attempt to create a term of disparagement to describe the white folk which they would find actually offensive and in that, like all previous attempts, it didn’t work.  However, it clearly made sense only if applied to white, middle-class females so had the effect of creating yet another exclusive enclave of white privilege and one which, by definition, excluded other ethnicities, even if becoming a basic bitch was their aspiration.

First noted in 2005 in a sub-set of popular music, basic bitch entered mainstream use circa 2009 and use appears to have peaked in 2014 although term may persist because it references a mode of behavior rather than anything specific to a time or place; it’s thus adaptable and generationally transferrable.  It’s also an amusing example of one aspect of how Sisyphean battles in the pop-culture wars are waged.  All those who coined the alliterative basic bitch were saying was “our taste in pop music is better than their taste in pop music”.