Trademarking, White Women, and Entitlement—Stop Claiming Phrases That Aren't Yours

[00:00:04]I know that the hot girls read retrademarking discourse fell into my like general niche over here, but I genuinely had no intentions of covering it. As an isolated incident, I feel like the coverage out there from other creators, it's it's pretty solid. But then it happened again with Hot Girl Walk. And it's definitely an if I had a nickel for every time someone tried to trademark a phrase, I'd have two nickels kind of a situation, >> which isn't a lot, but it's weird that it happened twice, right?

[00:00:35]>> And then it happened a third time with a different phrase, okay, albeit. But at this point, I did start to notice a pattern that is questionable at best.

[00:00:47]All three of these trademarking instances were incited by a white woman, which on its own, you know, maybe that's not the hugest of deals. Probably more of a correlation than it is a causation, but it's the words and the phrases and their origins that these white women are choosing to trademark that do have me raising my eyebrows. And I feel like I haven't seen very many people talk about these situations from this more sociolinguistic kind of angle. So, I'm gonna talk about it. Hello, I'm Maddie and welcome to Salted Latte, a place where I like to dissect and explore popular language and pros. By watching this, you're now considered a cool cat.

[00:01:29]So, congratulations. If you're interested in this sort of thing, I'd love it if you liked and subscribed and just did all the YouTube things. And also comment down below your favorite iteration of the hot girl blank phrase.

[00:01:42]Mine is probably hot girls stay hydrated because I am really bad at remembering to drink water. So I need that little reminder sometimes. Now to all of you, I am but a cat puppet. To the people in my personal [music] life though, I am, you know, for better or for worse, a white woman. And as a white woman, I think it's especially important for me to call out the tomoolery of other white women when I see it. So that's what we're going to do today.

[00:02:12]If you've been perusing over book talk for the last like month or so, I'm sure that you are at least somewhat familiar with Ali Rose and the whole hot girls read fiasco. But if you aren't familiar, if this is your first time hearing this, I'll give you a little TDLR. Basically, Ali Rose is a book fluencer and a small business owner. She does a lot of bookish themed apparel and goodies.

[00:02:35]Notably, she sells a lot of items with the phrase hot girls read on them. And that's not necessarily the problem. The problem is that she took this common phrase in the online bookish space and she obtained a trademark for it. Now, she admits she had only begun using the phrase hot girls read on her merchandise since 2020, only a few years ago. even though the iterations of the phrase have been around longer than that which we will get into a little bit later on. She announced this trademark on an Instagram post and that did not go over well at all. But she said it with peace and love so everything should be fine, right? And Ally didn't just trademark it in one category. She trademarked this phrase hot girls read to cover pretty much all stationary and clothing items. I'm not a trademark attorney or a trademark expert, but one thing I've learned through researching for this video is that if you trademark something, then you'd better be prepared to fight for it through the courts. It's on you alone to enforce that trademark, which can be a full-time job in and of itself. You can't just say, "Pretty please stop using this phrase," and then think that it's that's all that it takes. Ally did make a follow-up statement on her Instagram and that just made people even more upset because it showed that she clearly did not understand the scope of trademarking and maintaining it. Were these other businesses really copying you or were you both just using a pretty common phrase? The backlash from this second post actually got so bad that Ally made a third post on her Tik Tok account where she stated that she was going to file to terminate the Hot Girls Read trademark. Hi, I want to talk about my trademark. First and foremost, the trademark is being surrendered. [music] It is in the process of being filed right now to be abandoned. Um, I want to say that it does take time for that to go through, so it's not going to show up automatically, but the paperwork has already been filed. But more importantly, I want to say I'm so sorry to every small business that I harmed in doing this. the decision was made more as like a business strategy decision than a human being decision and I take full accountability for that. That was entirely wrong on my end. Um I I hear you and I take that on the chin 100%. I want to clear up the last within the last week I've seen a lot of um screenshots and messages from people saying that I sent them a seasoned assist or I sent them a message on Etsy to remove any hot girls read items. I want to say none of those came from me um because that was not my intent. I have not sent any of that since all this started. Um, as for the hot girls read apparel that I have on the shelves, it is currently up on my site with all profits being donated to two different charities, Room to Read and Read and Feed, which I also have linked in my bio. Um, and I just want to say once again, I'm so sorry. Um, this is my way of trying to write my wrongs that I do understand should not have been wrongs in the first place. And at the end of the day, I care most about community over anything when it comes to my business.

[00:05:22]Just a few weeks later, we run into a similar situation with the phrase hot girl walk. A creator named Mia Lind is claiming to have coined and popularized the phrase hot girl walk by posting this Tik Tok back in 2021.

[00:05:37]>> If you want to know how I went from this and this to this, this and also this, listen up. This is for you. It's actually really easy and there's really only one step and it is what I call the hot girl wall. Now, obviously there are a lot of health benefits when you go on these walks for a long time and walk kind of quickly, but it's what you do on the hawker walk that matters. You're only allowed to think about three things on the hawker walk. One, things you're grateful for. Two, your goals and how you're going to achieve them. And three, how hot you [music] may not think about any boys or any boy drama. I have a playlist that you can use. And if you ever start to think about any boogery drama or anything, you just turn that hot girl playlist up. The most important part of the hawker walk is that it doesn't end at the end of your you take that energy and you carry it with you throughout the whole day. If you try this, tag me. Something you'll notice across her posts is that Mia is very adamant about being the one who started this thought girl walk phenomenon. Okay, I just realized while editing this that this Tik Tok has copyrighted music blaring over it. I'm going to try my best to do like a dubbing over of what is being said in the video. Have you ever heard of the hot girl walk? Hawk girl walk? The walks you go on with your friends to get an ice coffee? Well, meet the creator of the hot girl walk, Mia.

[00:06:53]Trademarked. Yes, Mia created the hot girl walk during co to spice up her daily walks and what it means to be hot.

[00:07:02]Hot girl, this is so hard. Hot girls focus on things you're grateful for, your goals, and how you're going to achieve them, and of course, your confidence and hotness.

[00:07:12]She posted the Tik Tok in January of 2021 and her life hasn't been the same since. She quit a corporate job to build what the hot girls were asking for, the hot girl monthly meet walkups.

[00:07:25]This is so hard to speak at the same time this person is speaking. Mia works really hard with our marketing team.

[00:07:32]Just kidding. It's only her. She's the only one behind it and she's very adamant about that.

[00:07:38]Except for there's also these other people involved that help her with Rocoa walks. I don't know. It's kind of confusing. Okay, that's all. So, these walking events that she hosts are kind of her whole branding. That's her thing.

[00:07:49]She hosts different walking events in different cities. And I guess you could just sign up and peruse around together and then that's what a hot girl walk is.

[00:07:57]She very much so believes that she has revolutionized walking to the point where, you guessed it, she filed a trademark for Hot Girl Walk. And she is going after people who host their own walking events in their own towns with that phrase. Some people have even claimed that she's tried to get music playlists taken down that are titled Hot Girl Walk. Did you invent walking or do you think you did? So, let's talk about what it's like to create a viral phenomenon. At the time, there was a huge stigma surrounding walking. Nobody was walking for fitness or for fun. It was co and so walking only existed as like the post-dinner thing that your mom made you do. And then I realized doing a lot of research that walking actually had a lot of health benefits. And then I realized the thing that was holding people back from going on long walks, and that was, well, what do you do when you're alone with your thoughts? Look, I'm happy for her that picking up the habit of going on a daily walk was so impactful to her personally, but I do feel as though the way that she talks about this entire situation, it's almost like she thinks she invented going on a walk to clear your mind. When that conceptually has been around for ages, it just comes across as really entitled.

[00:09:05]All of this was brought to light when another creator, DK Fit, I think is how you pronounce it, posted a Tik Tok saying that her walking event was threatened to be shut down by Mia and her legal team because it contained the phrase hot girl walk in it.

[00:09:21]>> Legally, I'm not supposed to say this is a hot girl walk.

[00:09:23]>> I don't know if you know this, but hot girl walk is trademarked, so you're not allowed to use it. I personally didn't know that. So, when I wanted to host a hot girl walk event, they told me to take it down immediately. So, instead, this is a high temperatureed woman walk, which got the message across and in my opinion was a lot better. This was a free community walk with girls in the DMV area. It was such a beautiful day for a walk and after we got to socialize, eat, drink, and get refreshments from Alpha Foods. We're so excited to host the next one. So, make sure you follow us for upcoming dates.

[00:09:47]This video got over 4 million views, and as a result, DK Fit posted a follow-up saying that so many people were reaching out to her in response because they had had similar experiences with Mia and her legal team as a result of using Hot Girl Walk in a host of different contexts.

[00:10:04]And this is the last thing I'll say because I'm not one to reheat sail nachos, [music] but I would recommend just being careful or not saying hawk roll walk in general because ever since that video came out, I had so many women message me and tell me about their own personal experience. There was a girl who had a playlist and it was called hot girl walk and they basically told her to take it down or rename it. It could be as little as a playlist or something even bigger. There was one instance with a local community and they had to take them to court. It was a whole cease and desist and in order to settle in court, they could not talk about the situation.

[00:10:37]And there was another instance where a creator came out and said that basically they threatened to take her whole account down because she had started like a playlist or some sort of like I don't know videos with terms on it. But I don't know. It is trademarked. So if you guys don't want to get in trouble, I would just say I would just recommend not even saying it all and risking it unfortunately. And you can correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't believe that's how a trademark works. You only have the jurisdiction to go after other businesses in the same category in which you trademarked the word or phrase. If that other business is using that term in a way that causes brand confusion, like for example, I couldn't put the name craft on my own hypothetical box of macaroni to sell to people, but I could use craft with a K on like a crafting supply set or sewing supply set. I don't want to sound rude. I really don't. But if Mia's brand was truly the hot girl walk girly, then I just don't think she would have to be shoving it in our faces all the time so that we remember that she was the one who allegedly started this whole trend.

[00:11:46]So where does hot girl blank, the phrase even come from? Well, to my surprise, Little Wayne is actually the first person I can find who has associations with the phrase Hot Girl. Apparently, in the late '9s, he was part of a music group called The Hot Boys. In 1999, they released a song titled I Need a Hot Girl, which Lil Wayne helped write. But it really wasn't until around 2019 that we see the Hot Girl phrase blow up in popularity, coinciding with the rise of artist Megan the Stallion. In May of 2019, she released her mixtape Fever, which on the album artwork included the tagline, "She's the hot girl, and she's bringing the heat." She also is going by hot girl me on her social media profiles at the time. So, it really is it was and is still very much part of her branding.

[00:12:33]In her words, being a hot girl means quote being unapologetically you, having fun, being confident, living your truth, being the life of the party, etc. Riding off of the success of her hot girl branding, Mag released the song Hot Girl Summer featuring Nicki Minaj and Tai dollar sign. Thus, the Hot Girl Summer phrase was coined. And we've seen a resurgence of it nearly every summer since, maybe with the exception of Brat Summer in 2024, I would say. Me herself actually does have a trademark for the phrase hot girl summer under all of these clothing and apparel categories that I'll have listed on the screen here. But what I find interesting is that just last year it was reported that she had filed to extend that trademark to cover more areas like cosmetics and it was rejected. And yet these other women were able to successfully trademark their hot girl phrases even though they're super common phrases. And even though I believe when you think of hot girl anything, you think of me the Stallion first. And the main reason that Meg's trademark was rejected was because other people were in the process of trying to trademark hot girl related phrasing in all of these other categories. These other people in their pursuit of trying to profit off of something that isn't even theirs are hindering me, a black woman, from claiming the very branding that she popularized. And I do think that's concerning. Hello, I'm just popping in for a second to add on this point. If I sound gross, that's because I feel kind of gross right now. The California wildfire smoke blowing over is kind of kicking my butt right now. But nevertheless, we persist. I just wanted to say that, you know, by this point, Hot Girl Blank, that's a pretty common phrase, and I'm not saying that it's not, but, you know, regardless of who started it, you could definitely make the argument that it shouldn't be trademarked at all. I think that's fair to say, but hot girl and hot girl summer are terms that Me the Stallion has built her entire brand around. And it's not out of the ordinary for artists and celebrities to trademark words and phrases to keep their branding strong and consistent. And at least from what I can find online, [music] Meg and her team, they aren't repeatedly going after regular everyday people who are using hot girl related phrases like some of these other people are alleged to be doing. And they're also not even really going after other individuals who are trying to trademark those phrases.

[00:15:08]And from a marketing perspective, you know, maybe she's she's being a little too lax about keeping up with who is filing for these trademarks. But on a human level, I do understand why she wasn't being super pushy about it because it has become a community phrase. And if we've learned anything from these other trademarking related incidents, it's that the community doesn't like it when you try to legalize and restrict their phrases, which I totally get. I also just realized that one of the denied trademarks is actually Hot Girl Walk, and one of the categories it was denied under was fitness related.

[00:15:49]Looks like maybe it was a fitness app of some sort. And I do wonder how directly the other Hot Girl Walk trademark impacted the rejection of this one considering how similar the crossover could be.

[00:16:08]The most recent trademarking incident and maybe the least talked about one, at least at the time of me writing the script, is the attempted trademarking of the phrase diab. I had never heard of this phrase before, but I guess it is quite popular among the online diabetes community. People, usually women, but it could be anyone with diabetes refer to themselves as a diabetic. I'm assuming to make light of what could be a lifelong autoimmune disease, you know, depending on which type you have.

[00:16:40]Comment down below if you are part of the diabetic community. I don't have diabetes, but I do have relatives who do. And because it has to do with food and blood sugar, you have to really shave so much of your lifestyle around it. And of course, the cost of insulin in America can get so astronomical as well. It's a very costly illness to have. And for many people, it's genetic.

[00:17:03]So there's nothing they can really do to reverse it. Basically, this whole situation came to light when a Tik Tok was posted by a user named The Chronically illst, who has been selling merchandise with the phrase diabet on it for a while now. She is not the one who trademarked the phrase. In fact, she's actually pretty vocal in her comments about how she is against trademarking popular phrases like diabetes because it is not a word that one particular person can own. Someone in the diabetes community is attempting to trademark the word diabet. And I honestly don't know what to do about it anymore. So, I'm just going to tell you everything I know, everything that's happened with receipts. I found this trademark application for the word diabet specifically on graphic te's like the one I've been selling for the last 4 years. I saw who was behind it. I was honestly floored because I have offered this girl a Diabatti shirt as PR this time last year on a certain popular summer show on a certain island and it was honestly really cool representation.

[00:17:57]I made a video about it calling her a diabet and the person running her account commented on it and I messaged back and said that I would love to send her PR and she said that they would love the term diabet. She said she would put me on a list for her and I never heard back which no hard feelings. I know she was having her moment and I love that for a previous Love Island contestant named Jaden Ashley who also has diabetes. I think she was like the first person on Love Island to go on with diabetes and so that's why it sort of is kind of part of her branding now as well. change my insulin pump with me while I talk a little bit about what it was like to manage my diabetes inside the villa has filed a trademark for the phrase to be used on t-shirts and apparel specifically which is kind of suspicious because the other girl the chronically ill who made that Tik Tok said that this trademark filing happened only after she had offered to send Jaden one of her own diabet shirts when I saw she was trademarking diabet specific specifically for shirts, I crashed out a little bit. And after composing myself, I decided the mature diabetic thing to do would just be to directly message her and ask her if we could talk about this and if her intentions were to stop people like me and other creators from using the word diabetic on graphic t-shirts, cuz I'm not the only creator who uses the word diabetic on her merch.

[00:19:12]And I don't believe that I should be.

[00:19:13]So, it does kind of appear as though Jaden got the idea for diabetes centered merch from the chronically illness and is now trying to oust her as competition for a community word, a word that's meant to be shared. To be clear, I don't believe the trademark has gone through yet for this one. It's just pending. But she still has filed for it. So, it's clear that she wanted to use it for something. There's still intention there. What are her intentions? You might be wondering. Well, after learning about the trademark, the chronically illst reached out to Jaden again asking what her intentions were with this whole situation. Because, as we discussed with Hot Girls Read and Hot Girl Walk, you can't just claim [music] a word and then be done with it. You have to then put in the work to upkeep that trademark.

[00:19:56]Otherwise, a court's just not going to take you seriously if it comes to that point because they can just say, "Well, why do you care so much about this one person infringing on your trademark when you've let all these other businesses also infringe on it and do nothing about it?" that upkeep for the average person.

[00:20:12]It again can take a lot of time and money, especially if you are trademarking a word that a lot of people in your niche use, which is why common words and phrases don't often get trademarked. In response to this second DM, Jaden left her on red. She did read the message the next morning. I know I sent it at 3:00 a.m. I said I was crashing out a little bit, but she has left that message on red for the last like 2 and a half weeks. Current status of her trademark is that it is been published and I now need to oppose it if I want to fight it. To oppose it, I would need to pay $600 in fees. Or I can pay $200 in fees to get a 90-day extension to pay $600 later after I seek legal counsel. I'll be honest, I don't have $800 to spend on fighting this. And if I had $800 fundraised or donated, [music] I would want to give that back to the community, not fight to use the word diabet on a t-shirt. It feels so stupid. But she did later on go to post to her public Instagram with this little blurb right here just to clear up some misinformation. Nobody owns the term diab. not me and not anyone else. It's a community used term that has been around for years. There are already multiple trademarks for Diabatti in different trademark classes. Trademark classes cover different types of goods and services. It was not as simple as one person owning a word across everything.

[00:21:23]My application was only related to a specific category because I had been asked by hundreds of people if I was ever going to release merch. And if I chose to do that, I wanted to go through the proper legal process. At no point was my goal or intention to stop anyone from using the term or to prevent people who are already selling shirts from continuing to do so. I support this community and I would never want to take away a term that so many people identify with. Please make sure the information being shared is accurate before making claims about my intentions. And it really sounds like Jaden does not fundamentally understand how trademarking works because she admits she did submit to trademark Diabatti in that apparel category for legal protection. But then she also says it's not her intention to try and stop anyone from using the term and from selling products in that same category with diabet. So what even is the point of having the trademark? Is it a power move? That's kind of what it's feeling like to me. Not just in this situation with Jaden, but with Hot Girls Read and Hot Girls Walk as well.

[00:22:29]Well, where does baddie come from? You know, the phrase diabetes and baddy. We know what diabetes is, but what about baddie? Where does that come from? And what does it really mean? If you've been online at all from the 2010s onward, you probably recognize the word.

[00:22:49]Maybe you've called someone a baddie.

[00:22:51]Maybe if you're lucky enough, someone's referred to you as a baddie. The word refers to a confident, stylish, and attractive person. It's usually used in reference to a woman. And people generally use it in a complimentary way.

[00:23:04]You're a baddie is simply another means of saying you look good. You can also use baddy as an adjective, maybe in a sentence like she's giving off baddy energy right now. In this sense, baddy becomes more than a physical look, but an entire personality that someone can embody. The word baddy comes from African-American English or AE, also referred to as Africanamean vernacular English, AAV, which is a nuanced cultural dialect widely spoken across black Americans. So, if you aren't black or if you're not interested in socio linguistics like I am, you're probably only familiar with African-American English through a handful of its slang words that have become common in pop culture like baddy or lit fa snatched period, the habitual bee, or most of the words and phrases that I talked about in my exploring the queer history behind your favorite internet slang video. And even the term baddy itself is derived from another African-American English slang term, bad. Bad in terms of African-American English is thought to have had roots in the West African and Caribbean Creole meanings of the word in which bad can be used to mean good or intense. For example, the Gion Creole sentence me like bad, you know, means I like him a lot. The usage of bad is also found in Creo, a language primarily spoken in West Africa, specifically in Sierra Leon and Mandigo, the Amande language spoken by the Mandika people of northern Guinea Bisau regions as well as parts of Sagal and Gambia. Also, apologies if I did pronounce any of those words or names incorrectly. I am trying my best and it was not meant to be in a disrespectful way.

[00:24:57]Now that we know some of the history and the cultural weight of these phrases, I don't think it's a stretch to connect all three of these incidents through that. And I want to make it clear that I am not claiming it was any of these women's explicit intention to take a word rooted in black culture, related to black women specifically, and profit off of it by claiming it as their own. I don't think that they saw it that way, but that's kind of also part of the problem. You know, they weren't thinking past their own bubble, their own circle, their own entitlement. I'm also not making this video to say that you can never use hot girl or diabet ever again if you're white, okay? I don't think that's my place to say that. And that's also not necessarily the issue here.

[00:25:42]Cultural sharing is a good thing when it's done with curiosity and with respect. That's when it's appreciation.

[00:25:49]And we need more of that in this world.

[00:25:50]I think the issue is that these women were not appreciating. They were taking something they were invited into and trying to capitalize off of that, hurting the originators in the process.

[00:26:04]And by originators, I'm not just referring to Me the Stallion and her inability to trademark her own phrase.

[00:26:11]Now, I'm also talking about all of the women of color who resonate with and have been using iterations of both Hot Girl and Baddy for decades because that's just part of their language, part of their culture. Another thread between these three women, aside from their whiteness, well, I guess maybe connected to their whiteness, is that when called out about the trademarking, they all said something to the effect of they were doing this to protect themselves.

[00:26:38]And there is so much history behind the usage of protecting white women as an excuse to be discriminatory toward non-white people. Again, not saying this was anyone's intention here, but I do think it's kind of gross how when these women or many white women in general get called out for doing something wrong, they lean into that infantilization as a way to avoid taking any actual accountability. especially when you know black women don't have that option, don't have that luxury a lot of the time. In conclusion, maybe don't try and claim ownership of words that were never really yours in the first place. And if you really need a monopoly over the usage of one word or phrase that badly, then maybe your branding was never that strong to begin with. I'd love it if you liked and subscribed to the channel and also hype this video up. That's a new thing YouTube has now. that would help give this video a little boost in the algorithm. Like I said at the beginning of this video, over here at Salted Latte, I love to dive into and dissect language and pros through all sorts of mediums. Anything I'm interested in really. Let me know if you enjoyed this one or if you have any suggestions for future videos. I do also have an ASMR channel you can check out if you're into that. I'll have it linked below along with my Patreon if you'd like to support me in that way as well. All of these videos and my ASMR videos are posted over there early and adree. And if you feel inclined, definitely let me know if you have any ideas for bonus content I can make over there for this channel now that it's growing. I also do want to say thank you for 1,000 subscribers. I don't know when this video is coming out, but when I'm recording it is when I'm just when I'm just hitting that threshold. I really am grateful for every single one of you and I'm so happy that people are connecting with all the jumbled thoughts that live in my brain. I hope you are excited for the next video that I'm preparing as well that I actually paused working on to do this video, but it's all about conservative storytelling and echo chambers. And it's a little bit of a longer one. I think it's going to be like an hour long. But that's all I have to say for now. I will talk to you all soon. Goodbye.