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Bimbo is a term that emerged in popular English language usage in the late 20th century to describe a stupid, pliable woman. (Its occurs as early as 1929: in the silent film Desert Nights, a title describes a cheap female crook as a bimbo.) Because it derives from Italian words of masculine gender, its first usage in English was for stupid men; it now is understood to mean a woman unless modified as male bimbo, himbo, or mimbo. Some still prefer the explicitly female variant bimbette, which has also entered The American Heritage Dictionary. Others use bimbette for a younger bimbo. The word bimbo is sometimes interpreted as the backronym "Body Impressive, Brain Optional".
A bimbo isn't necessarily highly sexually attractive. Being a bimbo is a state of mind, and reflects a person who exaggerates the effort and value put into her physical attractiveness. She is often perceived to be shallowly focusing on her physical appearance and neglecting or even willfully stifling the development of other parts of her personality.
The archetype of a bimbo with sex appeal is much used as a stock character in comedies with sexual humor, an example being Christina Applegate's character, Kelly Bundy, in Married... with Children. Alicia Silverstone's character, Cher Horowitz, in Clueless is more accurately described as a Valley girl, a similar archetype with more laughably unusual priorities and behaviors than are strictly derived from the bimbo themes of comical stupidity and sex appeal. An older comedy archetype of perhaps more direct resemblance to the bimbo is the dumb blonde—for example, the giggling, naïve characters often portrayed by such sultry actresses as Marilyn Monroe.
Humor deriving from blonde women's (or male jocks') stupidity has been accused of sexism.
Use in fictitious media
An early use of the term in literature was in Agatha Christie's The Mysterious Mr Quin published in 1930. In one of the stories, a female character, Lady Stanleigh, has gone through 4 husbands. She is now 'hanging out' with the tennis pro; his name? - Bimbo. a bimbo is always blonde The term bimbette is used in the Beauty and the Beast animated film to describe three women that have "the hots" for local hunter and bodybuilder Gaston. They appear to be identical triplets (red, yellow, and green sexy French dresses, blonde hair, etc.) and had Kath Soucie and Mary Kay Bergman supply their voices.
An episode of the situation comedy Seinfeld featured a discussion of male bimbos; Jerry dubbed such a man a "Mimbo". This term has since become a fairly mainstream way to describe men with bimbo-like qualities. Another variant, himbo, was formed by analogy with bimbo. A similar term used primarily in gay communities is twink.
In P.G. Wodehouse the word "bimbo" occasionally occurs to denote a man. It can be neutral, but often implies at least situational stupidity or nonplussment. No sexual overtone is intended, however.
The villians in Ian Fleming's James Bond novel The Spy Who Loved Me refer to the protagonist as a "bimbo," which means, as the special agent explains to her, "whore" in the "gangster" slang that the arsonists-killers employ.
is also a Spanish/Mexican line of bread called *
See also
"Bimbo"