Women face a unique set of hilarious, highly specific, and universally recognized daily struggles. For example, staring into a closet bursting at the seams only to declare that we have “absolutely nothing to wear” for a night out. Or waking up with flawless, magazine-ready hair on a lazy Sunday when the only audience is our housecat.
Sharing memes about these micro-frustrations serves as a form of collective coping. And laughing at the sheer absurdity of our daily routines lowers stress.
Memes can also share useful information, support social causes, and raise awareness. The famous “Feminist Ryan Gosling” meme is a great example of how simple humor can make complex ideas easy to understand.
Gender studies graduate student Danielle Henderson created the meme as a fun way to study and break down heavy feminist theory for a broader audience. By placing educational captions over photos of actor Ryan Gosling starting with “Hey Girl,” the blog quickly went viral.
While created for a casual online audience, a study found these memes have a real impact on men. Researchers showed participants either plain photos of Ryan Gosling or photos paired with feminist text. The results showed men who viewed the feminist memes were more likely to agree with core feminist principles afterward.
It proves that simple memes can soften tough conversations and help spread important ideas to new audiences.
Memes focused on women’s experiences play a subtle but important role in empathy and education. They give people of all backgrounds a window into struggles they might never experience firsthand.
Take the classic grief over a freshly chipped gel nail. To an outsider, reacting strongly to a broken nail might seem trivial or dramatic. But a meme about it strips away sexist tropes about women being “emotional” and replaces them with a relatable truth about wasted time and money — something a lot of people can relate to.
Making light of awkward or stressful situations also proves that women are in on the joke.
Research shows that memes can actually help people manage anxiety. Humor naturally boosts our mood, and memes work the exact same way.
During the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, social media use skyrocketed as people turned to funny memes to cope with global shifts and uncertainty.
Multiple studies revealed that finding and sharing relatable and funny posts helped lower anxiety during the pandemic — especially for people who were feeling the most stressed.
“What we found was that if you viewed memes, you were in a better mood which made you feel more confident in your ability to cope with life during the pandemic,” said Jessica Myrick, professor of media studies at the Donald P. Bellisario College of Communications.
Memes focused on mental health have become a staple of online culture. They frequently rely on dark humor and irony as a practical way to deal with real-world struggles. For both the person creating the post and the thousands viewing it, poking fun at internal chaos serves as a relief valve for stress and emotional burnout.
These dark and sarcastic posts offer something rare on social media: genuine authenticity. Instead of forcing a fake, perfectly curated image of an ideal life, dark humor allows people to express their true feelings without shame.
Studies show that seeing others make light of shared struggles lowers feelings of isolation. It reassures viewers that they are far from alone in their daily battles.
Despite their simple image-plus-text format, memes have a remarkable ability to capture universal human emotions.
For example, the iconic “Distracted Boyfriend” photo was originally shot as a routine stock image by photographer Antonio Guillem. Once the internet took hold of it, the image became a sharp commentary on temptation, disloyalty, and poor choices. People use it to poke fun at everything from switching career paths on a whim to abandoning a healthy diet the second a pizza arrives. It resonates because it takes the real fear of betrayal and turns it into a playful way to call out our own lack of discipline.
