Citations:baby girl

Noun: "(fandom slang) a male fictional character or celebrity of whom one is extremely fond, especially a 'bad boy' type reinterpreted as adorable, quirky, or secretly soft-hearted"

 * 2022, Katelyn Sliwinski, "Is it weird to call Walter White ‘babygirl?’", The Michigan Daily (University of Michigan), 11 October 2022:
 * Is it wrong to drastically misinterpret the tone of this show [Breaking Bad] in favor of calling an elderly man “babygirl?”
 * 2022, Ruby Innes, "The ‘Babygirlification’ Of Ghost From Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare II", Kotaku, 7 November 2022:
 * Anywho, the TikTok girlies have decided that he is their favourite, and that he is their ‘babygirl’.
 * 2022, Jay M. (@starrpowered), "The Extraordinarily Ordinary Beauty of Reigen Arataka", YGKO Zine, Fall/Winter 2022, page 15:
 * Calling him a "babygirl" and entering him in the anime women bracket were not intended to emasculate Reigen but to humorously subvert the mainstream idea of who should be considered an object of desire.
 * 2022, Rachel Choi, "The babygirlification of Ghost in COD is threatening the incels", The Berkeley Beacon (Emerson College), 1 December 2022, page 4:
 * Many predominantly female communities seem to be drawn to Ghost’s faceless and masked concept, low-toned voice, and general physique, deeming him their “babygirl” to express their fondness for him. From headcanoning him, kicking his legs, and blushing at a compliment to wearing cat ears, Ghost’s menacing persona is being accepted as a cute little quirk to the girlies.
 * 2022, Jamie Eason, "No Canon We Die Like Men: The Oppositional Power of Fanon on Different Social Media Platforms", thesis submitted to Skidmore College on 8 December 2022, page 15:
 * A current fanon term on TikTok is “baby-girlification.” This term refers to the trend of, primarily young women, calling characters, usually middle-aged white men, their “baby girl.”
 * 2023, Rhiannon Bevan, "Breaking Bad's Vince Gilligan Joins TikTok, Zoomers Swarm Comments", TheGamer, 21 January 2023:
 * Whether it's saying that Jesse Pinkman is "babygirl coded", editing Jimmy McGill to be a cat girl, or making Kim Wexler fancams, Breaking Bad TikTok is truly a sight to behold.
 * 2023, Madeline Carpou, "The People Have Spoken: ‘SNL’s New Babygirl Is Marcello Hernández", The Mary Sue, 27 February 2023
 * 2023, Carola Ríos Pérez, "TikTok's Babygirlification: Explained!", Her Campus, 2 March 2023:
 * In this case, as said by this Kotaku article about Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II’s Ghost, babygirls would be the TikTok equivalent to the Tumblr Sexymen.
 * 2023, Gavia Baker-Whitelaw, "What does babygirl mean? And why does it refer to middle-aged men?", The Daily Dot, 10 May 2023:
 * One popular TikTok argues that a babygirl should have two of three things: “Eyes, cries, and war crimes. They have beautiful eyes, they’ve cried onscreen, they’ve committed atrocities.”
 * 2023, Kalhan Rosenblatt, "A 200-year-old sassy vampire from the video game Baldur’s Gate 3 is the internet’s new boyfriend", NBC News, 24 October 2023 (image caption):
 * Astarion – with his perfectly tousled silver hair, admirable six-pack and endless sassy quips – is the internet's latest "babygirl."
 * 2023, Alex Abad-Santos, "Jacob Elordi is the number one babygirl", Vox, 16 November 2023:
 * Altogether this amalgam of qualities and tidbits about Elordi — the teen crush on Legolas, the reverence for Kylie Minogue that falls at the intersection of Australians and gay millennials, the cool-girl collection of handbags, the boyish joy at TMNT, and the security to be able to talk about this all without embarrassment — is a portrait of a 6’5” man as the ultimate babygirl.
 * Altogether this amalgam of qualities and tidbits about Elordi — the teen crush on Legolas, the reverence for Kylie Minogue that falls at the intersection of Australians and gay millennials, the cool-girl collection of handbags, the boyish joy at TMNT, and the security to be able to talk about this all without embarrassment — is a portrait of a 6’5” man as the ultimate babygirl.

Verb: "to make a male fictional character into a 'babygirl'"

 * 2023, Darren Trisno, "Success in Succession", Cherwell (Oxford University), 9 June 2023, page 9:
 * No one in Succession is truly happy. No one is the hero. No one wins. In spite of Tiktokers attempting to “babygirl” (delusionally romanticise a character) their way into rooting for any one of the characters, the writers make it abundantly clear in the ending: when you play this game, there are no winners.