Taking public transportation means standing closer to strangers than you would normally stand next to your loved ones. Most of the time, when we are on public transportation, we either just keep to ourselves or talk to the people we are with, but Sabrina Bahsoon is on a mission to get the best videos of her outfits she possibly can, and what better place to do it then the London Underground?
On Sept. 13, Bahsoon perfected a TikTok of her lip syncing to “Starships” by Nicki Minaj and uploaded it without any extra thought. She now has over 400,000 followers on TikTok and has received 15.4 million likes.
Bahsoon, aka “Tube Girl,” is a 22-year-old living in London who rose to fame due to the videos she films of herself on the London Underground, commonly referred to as the tube, hence her nickname.
Her videos consist of her dancing and lip syncing to songs on the underground, filming herself using the 0.5x lens on the back camera of her phone. Bahsoon looks like she is having the time of her life, and she looks phenomenal doing it too.
You can clearly see in her videos that there are a lot of people around, which is what made them so popular. It isn’t common to see people dancing and singing into their phone on a crowded subway, and videos of people doing things out of the ordinary go viral.
In one of her videos, Bahsoon dances to the song “Beauty and a Beat” by Justin Bieber featuring Nicki Minaj, putting a text on the video that says, “Live your life. Romanticize the journey. Trust me no one actually cares.” In the lower caption, she put, “Like trust me there are crazier things happening on the tube dont worry bout me.”
In an interview with BBC, Bahsoon spoke about her rise to fame and what inspired her to make these videos. She says she was riding the underground one day when she thought of an idea for a TikTok because she wanted to show off her outfit. Bahsoon took it upon herself to ask a stranger to help her film it. “And he just straight up said no,” she said. “So I was like ‘you know what? I’m gonna do this alone. I want to make this video.”’ She started filming herself, posted it and is now famously known as Tube Girl.
These videos have opened many opportunities for Bahsoon, including being invited to walk in the MAC Cosmetics “The Face Show” that took place during London’s Fashion Week on Sept. 13. Additionally, Bahsoon has collaborated with singer Omar Apollo to promote his new music. Bahsoon recently uploaded a TikTok which showed the two of them in the underground singing and dancing to his upcoming single, “Live For Me.”
After one of Bahsoon’s videos hit one million likes, people began recreating her style of videos on their cities’ public transportation, furthering the spread of the trend on TikTok. “When I see people imitating it I’m like ‘finally like people are getting it,’” she said. She said she loves the fact that people are ignoring the fear of judgment in public spaces and doing whatever they want: “They’re enjoying their commute a little bit better. And I love to see people having fun, so it’s honestly such a heart-warming thing for me.”
This trend is one I can confidently get behind. Speaking from personal experience, I can name numerous times where I was in public and I wanted a photo of myself taken, but I was afraid of judgment from strangers. Thinking about it from a logical perspective, we probably won’t see those we pass on the street again, so who cares if they might be silently judging you for a couple seconds? It doesn’t matter, and this trend is a fun way to show people the enjoyment in getting out of our comfort zones every once in a while.
