Sabrina Bahsoon, a 22-year-old in London who went viral for her videos dancing on the tube, loves her online nickname “tube girl”. “I like how it’s a bit of a separate identity from my actual self,” she told i-D. This separation, she explains, includes who she was before she amassed global virality. “I was rotting in my bed jobless after graduating with my law degree and just searching for marketing jobs,” she adds. Now, she’s inspired a global movement of people shooting 0.5 style videos on the train, including those hoping to be the self-confessed “Warsaw tube girl”, “Swiss tube girl”, New York tube girl or even the “tube girl” of the Philippines.
Watching the ricocheting impact of Sabrina’s videos around the world is like watching online contestants petitioning to be the Miss Universe of their own tube. After tube girl’s virality opened up doors for her to walk in Hugo Boss’ AW23 show in Milan, sit front row at the Balmain show at Paris Fashion Week and work with Valentino Beauty and M.A.C Cosmetics, it’s little surprise that her followers would want in on the action. “When you go from Bakerloo to Bentley,” she posted last month in a video. With Kristina Avakyan, also known as Subway Sessions online, going viral a few months prior and trains becoming the new back-drop for outfit videos on TikTok, we’re witnessing the rise of the public transit It Girl.
Sabrina says her life has “completely turned around” since becoming dubbed “tube girl” on TikTok. “Going from doing nothing all day but job applications to fully flying to places and walking in fashion shows has been super fast-paced,” she says. At this point, she’s shot videos in subways across London, Milan and Paris — and there’s no denying that she has her own distinct filming style. Despite those concerned about the people on the tube in the background of her filming, she says people in London are the easiest to film in front of because they don’t look up and “don’t care”. She plans on visiting New York’s transit system soon, and bringing a leaf blower for her signature hair flips when she does.
Despite installing confidence in her followers to film, dance and flip their hair in public to a remix of “Yummy” by Ayesha Erotica and “Righteous” by Mo Beats, Sabrina says she’s a shy person when offline. “If I went to a party, I wouldn’t be the one going up to people to talk because I’m more in my own world,” she says. “I’ve found it difficult my whole life to express myself.” When making her videos, Sabrina says she “pushes through” any limiting beliefs that she has of herself. This inspired other creators like Bronte, a 27-year-old also in London, to make a “tube girl” video on a Ryanair flight. “Commuting is so mundane but ‘tube girl-ing’, it adds some spice and flavor to the everyday routine,” she says. “It also defies the fear that people are judging you.”
The rise of public transit content has brought with it discussions around privacy and today’s changing relationship with shared public spaces. Eden Mckenzie-Goddard, a fiction writer and content creator in the UK, compared the “tube girl” trend to the novel Ready Player One by Ernest Cline, where “the virtual world is more valuable than the real world”.
“I find the phenomenon really interesting because to record that type of video requires a lot of courage, along with an abandoning of the social etiquette that we once would’ve had,” he says. “I’m intrigued at what point we allowed ourselves to succeed online by feeling uncomfortable in reality.” This shift away from the social bonds of the collective, of course, is driven by what writer Niloufar Haidari calls today’s ever-present “unseen audience”. Essentially, the opinions of the 25 people in a tube carriage can soon become outweighed by the potential for a 500k audience, once you add an iPhone into the mix.
Eden says that the rise of public transit content parallels the fact that content creation is almost “not becoming a choice anymore”. With financial strife and stress on the rise and young people viewing the 9 to 5 as a trap, going “viral” on a tube, bus or even a plane has become today’s version of the American dream — a means to escape the grind of reality. “People are really struggling at the moment. They can’t afford to pay their bills,” Eden explains. “And there seems to be this golden ticket that if you get enough views, likes or engagements, you will be able to live comfortably.” This, Eden says, comes at the cost of navigating how to still maintain personal privacy.
Despite the promise of success after virality, becoming a ‘public transit It Girl’ hasn’t been enough to propel everyone into long-lasting stardom. Ever since Kristina went viral for her outfit videos in various New York subway stations, she admits, her life has “pretty much stayed the same”. “Now people recognize me on the streets, but I still do freelance styling and bartending,” she says. Kristina adds that her videos were never in the pursuit of money, instead mentioning her father Borik Avakyan’s untimely death during the pandemic as her inspiration. “He was extremely fashionable but he was buried inside a plastic bag because of restrictions,” she adds.
Kristina says she first started to record on the subway platform to kill time as she waited for the train. For Sabrina, her videos were for a sense of fun escapism to pass the time between replies from her internship applications (she says she still got a rejection letter back two weeks ago). “Everyone takes public transit and there’s a big chunk of your time where you have to commute, Sabrina says. “Being in those public spaces is not always the most glamorous or welcoming, but you can romanticize it to make your life seem a little more fun.” This romanticization has become a reality for this tube girl — who’s gearing up to pursue a career in music — but is still a fantasy for other aspiring public transit It Girls, waiting for the day they can go from the Victoria line to a Valentino fashion show.