I ain't got no time for that 'cause I'm about this money, baby girl, ya heard?
2003, Mitch Weiss, Perri Gaffney, Managing Artists in Pop Music[2]:
He called them all Baby-Girl. 'This Baby-Girl wouldn't leave me alone last night... I met this Baby-Girl... Me and this Baby-Girl was knocking boots this morning...'
"Okay, baby girl," he says. Baby girl. She hears it in wonder and for a moment the pain fades. Baby girl. He used to call her that all the time, making her groan, making her friends giggle.
Noun: "(fandom slang) a male fictional character or celebrity of whom one is extremely fond, especially a 'bad boy' type reinterpreted as adorable, quirky, or secretly soft-hearted"
Anywho, the TikTok girlies have decided that he is their favourite, and that he is their ‘babygirl’.
2022, Jay M. (@starrpowered), "The Extraordinarily Ordinary Beauty of Reigen Arataka", YGKO Zine, Fall/Winter 2022, page 15:
Calling him a "babygirl" and entering him in the anime women bracket were not intended to emasculate Reigen but to humorously subvert the mainstream idea of who should be considered an object of desire.
2022, Rachel Choi, "The babygirlification of Ghost in COD is threatening the incels", The Berkeley Beacon (Emerson College), 1 December 2022, page 4:
Many predominantly female communities seem to be drawn to Ghost’s faceless and masked concept, low-toned voice, and general physique, deeming him their “babygirl” to express their fondness for him. From headcanoning him, kicking his legs, and blushing at a compliment to wearing cat ears, Ghost’s menacing persona is being accepted as a cute little quirk to the girlies.
2022, Jamie Eason, "No Canon We Die Like Men: The Oppositional Power of Fanon on Different Social Media Platforms", thesis submitted to Skidmore College on 8 December 2022, page 15:
A current fanon term on TikTok is “baby-girlification.” This term refers to the trend of, primarily young women, calling characters, usually middle-aged white men, their “baby girl.”
Whether it's saying that Jesse Pinkman is "babygirl coded", editing Jimmy McGill to be a cat girl, or making Kim Wexler fancams, Breaking Bad TikTok is truly a sight to behold.
In this case, as said by this Kotaku article about Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II’s Ghost, babygirls would be the TikTok equivalent to the Tumblr Sexymen.
2023 April 6, Vaishnavi Shetye, “What is the 'Babygirl' meme, and how is it connected to male celebrities? New trend explained”, in Pinkvilla[4]:
At the moment, Twitter is full of tweets referring to grownup men being called “babygirls” for some reason. It has left a lot of people confused about what this trend exactly is and why 30/40-year-old men are being referred to as babygirl. Some celebs who have made it to this list are Lewis Hamilton, Paul Mescal, Colin Farrel, and Harry Styles.
One popular TikTok argues that a babygirl should have two of three things: “Eyes, cries, and war crimes. They have beautiful eyes, they’ve cried onscreen, they’ve committed atrocities.”
Altogether this amalgam of qualities and tidbits about Elordi — the teen crush on Legolas, the reverence for Kylie Minogue that falls at the intersection of Australians and gay millennials, the cool-girl collection of handbags, the boyish joy at TMNT, and the security to be able to talk about this all without embarrassment — is a portrait of a 6’5” man as the ultimate babygirl.
Verb: "to make a male fictional character into a 'babygirl'"
2023, Darren Trisno, "Success in Succession", Cherwell (Oxford University), 9 June 2023, page 9:
No one in Succession is truly happy. No one is the hero. No one wins. In spite of Tiktokers attempting to “babygirl” (delusionally romanticise a character) their way into rooting for any one of the characters, the writers make it abundantly clear in the ending: when you play this game, there are no winners.