As families reunite for the holidays, drama and feuds are sure to arise but this season big sisters are fighting back — with memes.
“Oldest daughters on their way to solve everyone’s problems yet again because no one will do it,” comedian and author Lane Moore captioned a TikTok video of a model trudging through Balenciaga’s mud pit catwalk at Paris Fashion Week last month. The clip went viral on TikTok with 864,800 views and hundreds of comments from older sisters relating.
“I feel more represented by this one TikTok than I do the entire US government,” one person quipped.
“The oldest have to keep it together for the younger ones even on tough situations,” Alma Lilliana Santos said. To which Moore replied, “And we sleepy.”
Multiple studies have shown that birth order can play a part in forming one’s personality. Birth Order Theory describes how the effect of birth order can shape a child’s thoughts and behaviors.
First-born children are prone “to being diligent and wanting to excel at everything they do,” according to Parents.com. But the expectations and reality of being the eldest combined with being a girl can create a complicated cocktail of pressures.
“Are u happy or are u the oldest sibling and also a girl?” Melissa Ong, 29, tweeted.
The tweet quickly went viral with 79,800 retweets and 15,900 replies as women connected to the message. Ong, a comedian a k a @chunkysdead, told The Post she was initially shocked by the flood of responses but realized she really struck a chord.
Ong has continued to run with her viral joke as an endless source of inspiration for her comedy including her recently released satirical song titled “Oldest Sibling.”
The TikTok music video has gathered 348,200 views with Ong rapping, “Ruthless standards, brute forces, self-esteem from external sources. I will work all day and night love comes accolades and validation right?”
“When you’re the first one, your parents make all their mistakes on you, but if you’re the first one, and also a girl … in like, a lot of ways you’re raised with extra standards,” she explained to The Post.
“Girls, in general, are always being taught you are not good enough as you are. You constantly have to be improving. You’re pressured to have the perfect body, the perfect personality, the perfect career and the perfect relationship. And then that is just amplified by being the oldest sibling.”
Psychotherapist Dawn Adjei Jackson of YourSoulCoaching LLC can relate on many levels. Not only does she see this play out in her practice, but she is an eldest daughter and has three daughters of her own.
Jackson acknowledges the long list of worries that every parent has for any of their children but told The Post that “there’s the added pressure of being a woman, and for parents to raise their daughters to be able to be prepared for this male-dominated world.”
However, Stephanie Omens, a licensed mental health counselor based in New York, believes that these prescribed characteristics of birth order and woman are far too rigid for today’s world.
“I don’t think we can pigeonhole people into the birth order of eldest, youngest and middle,” she told The Post, noting that a person’s character is developed through a myriad of variables. “Each home is different.”
But a large group of eldest daughters of all ages have found comfort turning to TikTok and Twitter uniting in their shared experiences with TikTok hashtags like #BigSister (1.8 billion views), #OldestDaughter (235.5 million) and #EldestDaughter (179 million) blowing up.
“Oldest sibling memes seem to capture this collective experience of people, but in a hyper specific way that hasn’t been said before,” Ong said of the endless stream of memes and videos flooding her corner of the internet.