Diary of a reformed ‘pick-me’ — they don’t truly exist
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Loading... - Chavez Veronica
- 04 Apr 2023
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“I’m not like other girls.” “Girls are too much drama.” “I’m just one of the guys.”
Chances are, you’ve heard someone say one or more of these things. Maybe you’ve said them yourself. I know I have. These are all statements stereotypical of the “pick-me girl,” a relatively new term for a phenomenon which has existed for ages — girls who reject femininity and the friendship of other girls in order to make themselves seem better in comparison.
The term emerged on TikTok, as people shared scenes from movies and TV with characters they found especially pick-me — like the scene from “Grey’s Anatomy” in which Meredith Grey delivers a speech to Derek Shepherd asking him to pick her, choose her, love her. Parodies of pick-me girls in class and hanging out with their friends fill the hashtag “pickmegirl,” and videos of girls vying for male attention by making fun of their friends or rejecting traditionally feminine activities receive comments like “Did he pick you yet?”
It was funny, at first, because a lot of the videos are pretty accurate. They depict, almost verbatim, actual conversations I’ve had with people I know. But once I thought more about it, I realized that it’s just a way in which women are encouraged to tear one another down, or do the very same thing they’re claiming to reject.
The whole idea of being a “pick-me” is ridiculous, simply because it’s impossible to truly be — or not be — a pick-me. It’s something I call the “pick-me paradox.” You see, the whole concept of pick-me girls is that they’re “not like other girls.” But, if we dive just a little deeper, by grouping a bunch of girls together — even if they claim they’re different — we’ll find that they’re actually pretty similar, which negates the whole premise of being a pick-me in the first place. And by labeling other girls “pick-me,” we’re asserting that we’re not like them, thus turning ourselves into pick-me girls.
In short, the creation of a term for a group of girls allegedly “different” from the rest means that we’re all pointing fingers at each other for essentially the same thing. It’s a double-bind, and there’s no winning this game — except to refuse to play at all. No matter what we do, when we judge other women, we’re going to feel like pick-me girls. For that reason, we’re all pick-me girls, and none of us are. Read More…
