"Wearing matching 'Squad' pajamas with 11 bridesmaids I’d never met, for the sake of a perfectly filtered, faux candid photo of us throwing our heads back and laughing..."

"... didn’t seem worth what the room would cost. So how could I say no to a friend I’ve known since we were 16, without becoming persona non grata?... I was uninvited to the long bachelorette weekend in Spain, and told, via WhatsApp, that I was no longer a bridesmaid. This left me $675 in the hole for what I had already spent on a trip I was now banned from, including a nonrefundable airline ticket...."

From "Go Broke or Go Home Bachelorette Parties/What happens when friends are consumed by wanting their bachelorette parties to be picture perfect at any cost? Credit cards are maxed out and debt rises. Instagram wedding envy wins the day" by Rhiannon Picton-James, published in the NYT on July 16th.

Interesting to see the disparaging use of "Squad." On July 15th, I was asking about the origin of the term "squad" to refer to the set of Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, and Ayanna S. Pressley. It had popped into the national discourse through Nancy Pelosi, who'd seemed to be trying to get the group under control. In my effort to understand the term, I checked out Urban Dictionary and found 2 definitions that help understand the disparagement intended by Nancy Pelosi and Rhiannon Picton-James:

"Crew, posse, gang: an informal group of individuals with a common identity and a sense of solidarity. The term is a bit flashy and is more likely to be heard in hip-hop lyrics than in spoken conversation"/"A word overused by teenagers that think they're ghetto to describe their clique of friends"/"A dumb word only used by white middle schoolers in suburban areas to describe their group of friends and try to sound ghetto. It doesnt make them sound ghetto, but actually increases their whiteness."

And here's a piece from Vox on July 17th, "How 4 congresswomen came to be called 'the Squad'/The term is making headlines, but Reps. Ocasio-Cortez, Omar, Pressley, and Tlaib have their own definition."

Back in November, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, then a representative-elect from New York, posted a photo of herself with three progressive women of color who, like her, were soon to be members of Congress — Ilhan Omar (D-MN), Ayanna Pressley (D-MA), and Rashida Tlaib (D-MI). The caption: “Squad.”...

One photo caption doesn't mean we've become a group and this is our name. The question is how did that name stick and is it something they wanted or something that was used to disparage them?

But the term “the Squad” became more widespread in media earlier this month when New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd used it in an interview with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, in which Pelosi took the four to task for voting against a border funding bill....

It's Pelosi who made "The Squad" happen — with a big assist from Maureen Dowd. Vox doesn't explain "How 4 congresswomen came to be called 'the Squad.'" There's a November data point and then we jump to July. What went on?!

The idea of Ocasio-Cortez, Omar, Pressley, and Tlaib as a “squad” unto themselves emerged slowly. When she Instagrammed a picture of herself with her four future colleagues shortly after the 2018 midterm elections, Ocasio-Cortez was using a common social media expression of friendship and solidarity that has its roots in hip-hop.

A squad is “a self-chosen group of people that you want to identify with,” whether you’re just going to the pool or doing civic activism, said Nadia Brown, an assistant professor of political science and African American studies who studies black women in politics....

Others didn’t necessarily use the word “squad” to refer to the congresswomen right away.... Then in early July, Pelosi called out the four to Dowd in the Times for voting against “our bill.” “All these people have their public whatever and their Twitter world,” Pelosi told Dowd. “But they didn’t have any following. They’re four people and that’s how many votes they got.”...

“Because this is a sort of term that has come from social media and pop culture,” Dittmar, the Center for American Women and Politics scholar, explained, “those who are in opposition try to use it to demean the seriousness of not only these women but also what they’re doing.”...

Some have criticized media use of “the squad” as infantilizing or sexist. It can also feel appropriative. “It’s just like, we’re going to take something that people of color have been using and try to claim it or use it as our own without understanding where it comes from,” [said Nadia Brown, an assistant professor of political science and African American studies who studies black women in politics].

It’s also worth noting that just because Ocasio-Cortez once captioned a picture “Squad” doesn’t mean that the four congresswomen see themselves as a separate group from others in Congress, or in America. That’s a separation that’s been imposed upon them, by Pelosi and then by Trump....