The decidedly unpleasant phrase "hitting the wall" is back in the public consciousness this week, thanks to a viral but much-derided tweet about Game of Thrones actress Sophie Turner.
Now a buzzword among misogynist groups online, this term has actually been around for a while. But what does it mean, and how did it become such a persistent term in the manosphere?
Buying into a toxic and old-fashioned view of women's desirability, "hitting the wall" refers to the moment when a woman supposedly stops being attractive. Parodied in the 2016 Amy Schumer sketch Last Fuckable Day, this concept is already baked into our society—but when someone directly refers to a woman hitting the wall, they're making that message much more explicit and intentionally cruel.
This slang term has been in use for over 20 years, documented online as far back as a Quora thread in 2000, where someone asks about women "losing their appeal" once they reach 35. In recent years though, it's had a real resurgence thanks to the spread of men's rights activism, pickup artist culture, and fascist ideologies about the role of women as wives and mothers.
So along with the fratboy sexism of just badmouthing women for getting older, this phrase is now strongly associated with the idea that women should get married and have children as young as possible—i.e. aiming to become subservient wives before they "hit the wall." Which is part of the reason why this tweet about Sophie Turner attracted so much backlash:
Posted by an account using the acronym "MGTOW" (Men Going Their Own Way, a misogynistic separatist group), the original tweet includes a photo of Game of Thrones star Sophie Turner and her husband Joe Jonas.
Taken at the 2022 Met Gala, the photo depicts Turner (then 26) when she was pregnant with the couple's second child. She's also wearing stylized makeup that gives her face a gaunt appearance—something that this Twitter user interpreted as negative signs of aging.
These comments immediately sparked criticism and mockery, because a) Sophie Turner is very beautiful by all conventional standards, b) the original tweeter doesn't seem to understand how makeup works, and c) Turner got married and started having children in her twenties, something that this kind of guy is meant to approve of. Basically, the idea of Sophie Turner "hitting the wall" just proves the hollowness of this entire mindset.
"The Wall is an ever evolving term, it seems," reads one of the top replies to this tweet. "One day The Wall means unwed with dried up eggs, the next day it means you no longer look like a teenager. I thought yall wanted women to be married with children?"
Others pointed out the circular logic of saying that women should get married "before they hit the wall" and trying to claim that pregnancy made a woman unattractive. Many also shared other photos of Sophie Turner from the past year or so, illustrating that she looks both young and radically different depending on her makeup choices.
Basically, this Sophie Turner post provided the perfect opportunity for people to highlight the self-defeating nature of "hitting the wall" as a concept.
The underlying purpose for this kind of language is to make women feel insecure and self-critical, pressuring them to settle down early no matter what. But when you expand this criticism to include someone like Sophie Turner—a happily married celebrity in her twenties—the phrase begins to lose all meaning. It makes it clear that these guys will find ways to denigrate women no matter what, so there's no point in catering to their opinions in the first place.
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