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It's not crazy, it's accounting: what “girlmath” teaches us about bias

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  • Cika, Anxhelo

Abstract

2023 was, by most accounts, the year of the girl: girl dinner, girl math, Barbenheimer, and a wave of internet culture built for and about young women. Girl math went viral for its own kind of purchase “justification”: an item worn often costs less each time you wear it, and a return is basically profit, among many more. The joke was filmed straight to camera, often with a partner or friend on hand to play the “rational,” “financially literate” counterpart to the woman's logic. It built a community as much as it drew backlash, but nobody looked closely at what the “math” was actually doing. Drawing on mental accounting, Foucauldian and institutional perspectives on accounting, feminist and postfeminist theory, and work on accounting as a gendered practice, this paper argues that girl math is not merely an instance of Thaler's mental accounting but a form of accounting in its own right: informal, local, community-driven, and performed publicly on TikTok; separated from formal accounting not by its logic, but by who is recognised as doing the counting.

Suggested Citation

  • Cika, Anxhelo, 2026. "It's not crazy, it's accounting: what “girlmath” teaches us about bias," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 140913, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    • Handle: RePEc:ehl:lserod:140913
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    File URL: https://researchonline.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/140913/
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    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Ingrid Jeacle, 2009. "Accounting and everyday life: towards a cultural context for accounting research," Qualitative Research in Accounting & Management, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 6(3), pages 120-136, July.
    2. Ingrid Jeacle, 2009. "Accounting and everyday life: towards a cultural context for accounting research," Qualitative Research in Accounting & Management, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 6(3), pages 120-136, July.
    3. Asdal, Kristin, 2011. "The office: The weakness of numbers and the production of non-authority," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 36(1), pages 1-9, January.
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    Keywords

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    JEL classification:

    • M41 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Accounting - - - Accounting
    • D91 - Microeconomics - - Micro-Based Behavioral Economics - - - Role and Effects of Psychological, Emotional, Social, and Cognitive Factors on Decision Making
    • D14 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Household Saving; Personal Finance

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