About

Women Be Shopping is a catchphrase from the 1996 film The Nutty Professor said by comedian Dave Chappelle as insult comic Reggie Warrington. The phrase has been used humorously online in various contexts.

Origin

In The Nutty Professor, Eddie Murphy's character Professor Sherman Klump attends a comedy show where Chappelle is performing as Reggie Warrington. Warrington repeats the line "Women be shoppin" to laughs. Murphy's character leans over to another character and says "That's true, women do shop" (shown below).

Spread

The phrase became a common reference in pop culture. For example, the character Kevin from The Office quoted it in the episode "Money," which aired October 18th, 2007.^[2]

On February 20th, 2009, Urban Dictionary user crazycyrax^[1] uploaded a definition of the phrase which read, "a phrase used to describe the strange/abnormal/inexplicable things women sometimes do." In 2013, Jezebel^[3] referenced the joke in an article about a car commercial pandering to women. Hannibal Buress also referenced the joke in the December 14th, 2014 episode of The Eric Andre Show (shown below, left). James Corden also made some "Women be shoppin'" jokes in an episode of his show that aired March 16th, 2016 (shown below, right).

Online, the phrase is used in jokes in which a person attempts and fails to perform gendered humor. For example, a tweet by @electrolemon^[4] posted on July 30th, 2017 with this type of joke gained over 7,600 retweets and 37,000 likes (shown below, left). On November 3rd, 2017, Twitter user @bobby^[5] made a similar type of joke, gaining over 40 retweets (shown below, right).

On February 15th, 2017, Tumblr user rf9weu8hjf789234hf9 uploaded a video in which a chyron reading "WOMEN BE SHOPPIN" appeared in front of Bernie Sanders, gaining over 11,000 notes (shown below). By the end of 2017, the phrase had grown to be a meme on the website. It was covered by Meme Documentation on December 27th, 2017.^[6]

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References