Raven Epps, better known as Bimbo Fairy, has had a noteworthy year. It all started with a whirlwind troubled marriage. “My husband actually started out as one of my friends. After we started dating, we got married pretty quickly. Soon after, there were many times he would be out with his friends until early morning. Things got pretty bad between us and he ended up leaving me. I just lost it after that. It seemed like the person I had just married was not the same person I was trying to reason with and get back with; he was basically brushing me off for some time after that,” she recalls. This spousal ghosting could not have happened at a worse time. “I had surgery last year, during the time he was gone, which was pretty rough.” The surgery left her in unbearable pain and unable to take care of herself. “I didn’t realize how bad it would be. I was pretty much unable to move, or even shower on my own, for months. It was really upsetting. I asked him to help me numerous times, and he just wouldn’t do it. Then I started browsing his Instagram. He had started following random girls and we knew all the same people. I could just tell by looking at them that some of them were Tinder girls. I reached out to a few of them, who unfortunately confirmed it, though he denied it at the time.” Seething and feeling abandoned, Raven found comfort in memes. She created Bimbo Fairy both as a coping mechanism and as a simple means of centralization. “The meme page started because I felt like I was flooding my friends’ inboxes with memes. I made the page so that I didn’t feel like I was bothering them so much.” Her body eventually healed. Her husband eventually returned. But the emotional wounds are still throbbing. “I felt insulted and humiliated. It’s still hard. There are times where it’s clear I’m not over some things.” 

As her marriage dangled by a thread, her account caught fire. What started for solace quickly became a phenomenon. “People randomly started finding it, which was cool. In the last three or four months, I think it’s more than doubled. It’s a positive thing that came out of something bad. I definitely made a joke to my husband. I was like, ‘Thank you so much for leaving me. It’s really helped me a lot with my page.’ At this point, I just try to keep it going. Mostly because so many people have reached out to thank me for helping them get through something difficult; they seem to enjoy it. I try to keep a common theme going on the page for consistency and so that people know what to look for. It still helps me, too.” Raven was taken aback by the growth. “At first, I was really excited that some of the meme pages that I’d been following for years followed me. When I started waking up to tons of activity, I thought, ‘What’s happening?’ I never promoted the page. I have imposter syndrome with everything I do, so I often think, ‘Do they understand that they’re following my page? What am I doing?’ I feel like that with work and my relationships, too. Regardless, it’s really cool to see that people are enjoying it. I’m definitely glad that something good came out of a really tough year.” It’s a welcome win after decades of grief and survivalist mentality. “In some ways, I started picking up bad cards at an early age. My dad was killed when I was a teenager. After that, I made terrible choices: hung out with the wrong people, did everything wrong. I think that the way that I choose relationships and partners could be connected to that. A few years later, my best friend died. These things are still difficult to deal with, and sometimes, I feel like I’ve hardened in some ways. Eventually, you kind of go into survival mode. It sucks, but it can also be a good thing.”

The page has become so popular that Raven even decided to sell merchandise. “My mom is the one that inspired me to do it. She’s always been really supportive of me and suggested I find a way to monetize the page’s growth. So I thought, ‘Yeah, but I don’t know what I would do.’ I hate when meme pages show ads and stuff; it’s just a buzzkill. I decided that I wanted to sell an actual product and not just some vibrators for 50% off. It started with a couple notebooks, and I eventually began playing around with designs for shirts, too. Surprisingly, people seemed to really like them, so I just kept going with it. I try to make the merch match the voice of the page. If someone wants to contribute to me in any way, I want to offer them a product that they might actually care about.” 

While the Bimbo Fairy feed is meant to be a source of laughter, Raven is also proud of the growth and boundaries her page represents for her personally. “When I was younger, girls couldn’t speak up about their experiences without backlash or being disbelieved. I feel like any girl that’s been through stuff like that, one day, reaches a point where they’re angry and fed up. Eventually, you’re like, ‘I’m absolutely never going to let anything like that slide again. Just don’t take any shit from men, you know?” It’s mostly lighthearted, but she’s not afraid to directly express her point of view. “I’m not trying to push people or piss anyone off. Every once in a while, I reveal some of my personal beliefs. For instance, I will post about police officers on occasion. I’ve had a lot of arguments with my friends about things like that. I’ve tried to keep a cap on it because, you know, no one really wants to have my agenda pushed on them, and I respect that. But every once in a while, if I see a really funny meme that has to do with something like law enforcement, I’m like, ‘Yeah, this is going on there,’” she laughs. Her increasingly expanding audience is always in the back of her mind. “The more the page grows, the more conscious I am that there are a lot of people seeing my stuff, so I’m trying to be more aware of what I’m posting. Unfortunately, there are some people that want to cause trouble on my page. I had to put up a setting so that someone has to be following me for five weeks before they can leave a comment. People will take time out of their day to find a page they don’t agree with and attack it; they think I need to be put in my place. They’ll send me a nasty message, attacking me as a person, or leave really outlandish comments. There are so many people like that.”

Through it all, the page has coalesced into an irreverently funny and warmly supportive family. “Yesterday, someone responded to one of my stories, which was a selfie, and said: ‘our president.’ I love seeing stuff like that. It’s a weirdly supportive little community,” Raven smiles. “So I definitely want to keep that going. It makes me really happy that there are people that feel like they’re in an inclusive setting, where they may be understood and not alone in what they’re going through. They can laugh about it in some way. You know? The good messages that I get are what makes it worth it: when people let me know that they’ve been struggling and that after they read through my page, it really helped them, even though it’s ridiculous. I hope to keep the page going and see what it turns into.” In the darkest days of life, rest assured that Bimbo Fairy is waiting with outstretched arms and a fresh batch to cheer you up. 

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How Bimbo Fairy Made All Our Meme Dreams Come True. Photo Credit: Courtesy of Raven Epps.