2014 has been a big year for the term “basic”; as Noreen Malone observed recently in a thoughtful essayin ugg boots adirondack decorating the Cut about the term, “it’s a word we’d been looking for.” Appropriated from hip hop culture, where it meant something closer to “corny” or “dumb” or “tacky” or some combination of the three, the term “basic bitch” has come to mean something very specific. There are even instructions on BuzzFeed for putting together a high end variation on the costume I wore
