Streeter: A Maryland native tried to trademark ‘Hot Girls Read.’ Baltimore girls read her.

The attempt by Maryland native Allie Mitrovich to legally co-opt and claim financial ownership of the phrase “Hot Girls Read,” a well-known cultural concept she didn’t create, seemed offensive to the normally welcoming, accepting book world. In fact, to the local book community, it felt downright familiar, hon.

“It’s like the Cafe Hon lady,” Baltimore creative and avid reader Tiffany Underwood Holmes said, referring to former Hampden restaurant owner Denise Whiting, whose trademark of the word “Hon” had locals burning up under their beehives and cat-eye glasses. “That didn’t turn out well for her.”

The Hons and the readers of the book community, or what they refer to as “bookish,” have things in common. They’re usually associated with friendliness and warmth, rather than outwardly led by cold, hard capitalism. As a reader and author, it feels gross to try to make money off other people’s words. I like being paid, of course, and I don’t want to be in anyone’s pocket, but the idea of filling yours with profits from something you don’t own galls me.

Whiting’s name came up a bunch in local social media discussions recently after Mitrovich, who runs apparel and stationery company Allie Rose Co., trademarked “Hot Girls Read” and asked other businesses to remove their merchandise featuring the phrase. There are many theories as to who first put those words together, but it sure wasn’t Mitrovich, who, after much public dragging, announced Monday she was surrendering her ownership of the phrase.

“Giving something back you stole before it’s inevitably forcibly removed from your possession? I guess that’s a new definition of ‘surrender’ I hadn’t heard before,” Holmes said.

“Hot Girls Read” has shown up online and on products that predate Mitrovich’s trademark. Avid reader and Pasadena shop owner Shannon Speakman told me she believes she saw it floating around MySpace and LiveJournal in the late aughts.

But the general impetus for the “Hot Girls” craze seems to be Megan Thee Stallion’s 2019 “Hot Girl Summer,” sparking the declaration of hot girls to do anything they damn well pleased, including read. “I don’t think you should be able to copyright common phrases,” said Speakman, who describes the local bookish community as “feisty.” Also, “It feels very much like ‘What the hell?’”

That trend, like so many other popular things that are labeled “internet slang,” originated with Black women. The attempt by Mitrovich, who is white, to make money off it, while stopping others from doing the same, feels like good old-fashioned cultural appropriation for profit.

“She thought she was going to increase her reach, but it didn’t go the way she thought it was going to go. She wasn’t building a bigger tent. She was staking her claim, colonizer-style,” Holmes said. “It’s just a trend of cultural evolution. So many things start with Black women.”

Holmes believes that increasing visibility and income stream may have been the motive for Whiting, also the creator of the now-defunct Hon Fest. (In full disclosure, I briefly babysat for Whiting’s son and worked at her catering company in 1991, the year before the restaurant opened. She didn’t respond to my request for comment. Neither did Mitrovich.)

In 2011, Baltimoreans discovered Whiting had trademarked “Hon,” an archetype that predated her restaurant by decades. It didn’t endear her to the community, who felt she, like Mitrovich, was bogarting someone else’s idea.

The restaurateur publicly announced she was giving up the trademark on a hard-to-watch episode of Gordon Ramsay’s “Kitchen Nightmares.” But legally claiming it in the first place seemed so outside the spirit of the Hon that it threatened to overshadow the fun things she created.

Speakman actually waited to announce the name of her own shop, Hon Style Sweets, until the day after Cafe Hon closed. “We named our business because we wanted to pay homage to the city we love. Trying to trademark that felt very icky.”

People who didn’t know who Mitrovich was before sure do now, but like Whiting, maybe not for the reason she wanted. “Now her name is out there for a pretty bad reason. While I’m sure she’ll have supporters, I won’t be one of them,” Barb Staigerwald of Dundalk wrote me in a message. “The entire thing felt gross to me. There’s enough room for everyone in the bookish merch space.”

She and Holmes noted the irony that Mitrovich tried to claim ownership of a phrase she didn’t invent when Allie Rose Co. made its own line of bookmarks based on the incredibly popular “Heated Rivalry” book series, which Mitrovich doesn’t have a license for. “Rules for thee but not for me,” Holmes said.

The whole trademark to-do might not have gained Mitrovich the best reputation, but it has united the bookish community. “When you do something like that, it shows you don’t understand it,” Speakman said of Mitrovich, who has posted that she’s been an avid reader for only a few years. The nerve.

In her apology post on Instagram, Mitrovich, who now lives in North Carolina, admitted the trademark had been “more of a business strategy decision, than a human decision.” Reading touches us in a very personal, human place; forgetting that seems to be the problem.

“She learned a couple of very harsh lessons in business — don’t bite the hand that feeds you, and how word of mouth can make or break your business,” Speakman said. “I hope she does learn from this and that she does recognize where she went wrong.”

Maryland author Sara Goodman Confino was less charitable. “I don’t think she’s sorry,” she said. “Just caught.”