By Sophie Haigney

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“Are you a leftist who likes to have their tits out? Do you like to flick off pro-lifers?” Chrissy Chlapecka asks the camera in a 51-second TikTok captioned “BIMBOS, RISE 💖‼️” In the video, Ms. Chlapecka, a 22-year-old comedian who lives in Chicago and has about 4.6 million TikTok followers, is wearing a tight pink minidress, a pink coat trimmed with faux fur and tall white leather boots; her bleach-blond hair is in pigtails. “Are you good at math?” she asks, scribbling “2+2=<3” into a notebook. She holds a pose while reading a book upside down. “Are you good at reading? Well, if you are, how?” At the end of the video, she yells out the window: “I’m a bimbo and I’m proud!”

Ms. Chlapecka’s celebration of the much-maligned category of the “bimbo” is provocative, even shocking. In a recent phone interview, Ms. Chlapecka told me she identifies as feminist but that a lot of feminism needs to be “reworked.” Like critiques of many women of her generation, hers include the historical whiteness of many strains of feminism, its heteronormativity and the persistence of anti-trans voices within the movement today.

In a messy period when many are trying to redefine feminism, a wide variety of intriguing, occasionally fraught new iterations have come about. One of these is evident on #BimboTok, a corner of the internet that Ms. Chlapecka helped create. It’s a space where comedians and creators mix makeup tips with articulations of left-leaning politics. In her videos, Ms. Chlapecka’s tone is dripping with sarcasm and irony. It’s OK to wear a faux-fur hot pink bralette, she assures us, and it’s also OK if we don’t know long division or who Elon Musk is.