Women on TikTok are proudly showing off their “septum arms.”
What are septum arms, you ask? You won’t find answers in any medical dictionary. Still, videos about these odd-sounding appendages continue to flood the popular social media app after the phrase popped up as a recommended search term, leading to mass confusion about what it could possibly mean.
Spoiler alert: Septum arms are the imaginary result of two random words mistakenly juxtaposed into a nonsensical phrase. After all, septums exist in our noses, not our biceps. (In the words of one befuddled TikToker: “What’s next? Armpit feet? Like is this a joke?”)
Septum arms may be silly, but the story of how they wrapped themselves around TikTok’s collective consciousness ends with a serious lesson in social media’s intractable momentum. More significantly, the weird tale reflects the very real pressure women feel to adhere to narrow cultural standards of beauty, especially in a world of app filters and other editing tools that let people to make themselves over instantly and dramatically.
Studies show that social media negatively impacts how young women feel about themselves. That could help explain why so many young women on TikTok are interpreting the phrase septum arms as an unflattering description of the fleshy tricep area on the back of the arm above the elbow and how it naturally widens when the arm relaxes against the side of the torso.
In videos across the app, these women say they’re hurt and angry at what they see as another derisive attempt to make them feel lousy about themselves. And in rebellion, they’re turning “septum arms” into a symbol of body positivity, a feature to be flaunted in the face of carefully curated social media posts and AI-generated influencers.
“After finding out what ‘septum arms’ are, I am no longer wearing this jacket today,” one TikTok user wrote in a video that shows her twirling confidently in a pink dress, her white jacket lowered from her shoulders to show off her upper arms.
How Did ‘Septum Arms’ Become A Thing?
As the site Know Your Meme indicates, the phrase appears to have originated with a post from TikTok user Kaci Bullock, who five days ago posted a video of himself shaking his head, with the words “OMG ew. Bro, look at her arms” overlaying the footage. “This world is full of sick people,” the TikTok user wrote, indicating disapproval at the way people criticize women’s bodies.
Bullock, who goes by the TikTok handle orlandospeciality, titled the video “Understanding Keloid Scars and Septum Piercings” (in past videos, he’s made it abundantly clear he’s not a fan of that body part getting pierced). Keloids scars are thick, raised areas on the skin that can form after injuries such as cuts, burns, piercings, tattoos or incisions.
As Bullock describes in the comments, TikTok’s algorithm accidentally mashed up the words “septum” and “arms,” inventing a designation that sounds like it could come to animated life in a Tim Burton film. “Yeah, they glitched the search AI,” Bullock wrote. Neither Bullock nor TikTok responded to a request for comment.
The video has been viewed more than 16 million times as of this writing, and gotten close to 11,500 comments. It’s also led to apparent parody videos like this one, in which a different guy, one with more than 5 million followers, looks disgusted as the words “omg eww bro look at her septum arms!” flashes on the screen.
Problem is, some people on TikTok are taking those satiric videos seriously. “Just looked up what septum arm means. New insecurity unlocked,” wrote a commenter on that video.
Some TikToks posted in response to septum arms show women looking discouraged, saddened and even tearful as they ponder their understanding of the new phrase.
“Learning about septum arms literally breaks my heart,” reads the text on a video of a woman shaking her head and looking discouraged. “Like I have always been insecure about my arms, but this brought that out knowing there’s a nickname for them. Whyyyy?”
Fellow TikTokers were quick to reassure her, however, turning septum arms into an opportunity to highlight the chasm between reality and the embellished images that fill social media.
“This isn’t real,” one wrote. “TikTok isn’t real. Social media isn’t real. You’re gorgeous. For real.”
