The term “pick-me” can be traced back to a 2005 episode of Grey’s Anatomy in which the main character, Meredith, pleaded to a man, “pick-me, choose me, love me.”
In the mid-2010s, the phrase gained popularity on Twitter to refer to specific behavior associated with women who seek male validation. The term “pick-me girl” arose on TikTok in the early 2020s to describe a girl or woman who demeans other women in an effort to gain male attention.
Pick-me girls will often claim that they don’t enjoy traditionally feminine hobbies or interests, that they prefer male friends over female friends because “women are too dramatic,” and the most well-known quote, that they are “not like other girls.”
Pick-me girls intentionally separate themselves from the general female population in an attempt to place themselves at the top and become more appealing to men. This doesn’t happen out of the blue or for no reason, but rather is an outcome of prevalent misogyny and the belittling of women that we experience from birth.
“As a little girl, I was taught to dream of being chosen. No one told me I could choose myself.”
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
From the time we begin to understand gender roles, which happens at only two to four years old, misogyny and sexism towards women is engrained in us. Little girls are led to believe that feminine qualities make them weak. Whether it be the color pink, dresses, dolls, etc., anything typically associated with femininity and girlhood are antagonized.
This causes girls at alarmingly young ages to begin to harshly reject these “girly” things in an effort to gain respect and be taken more seriously. They are led to believe the only way they can gain power in the world is by acting boyish. “Girly” things are bad. If young girls aren’t able to unlearn this internal misogyny, it can lead to deep insecurity, and a tendency to look down on other women—and thus, the pick-me girl is born.
Pick-me behavior, at its core, is a reaction to the way women are perpetually oppressed in society. Women are shamed for various aspects of their identity and femininity, and pick-me girls aim to escape this prejudice by becoming “one of the good ones.”
They’re “different”, “better”, and therefore, undeserving of the same scrutiny given to other women. This logic is extremely flawed, as it only perpetuates misogyny, rather than saving the pick-me girl from oppression.This is not to imply pick-me girls should be relieved of the responsibility of their actions—this is to shed light on the systematic sexism that leads to this phenomena. Instead of shaming women for their pick-me behavior, we should shame the societal systems which push them to do this, and help women to work through their own internalized misogyny.
“The enemy within must be transformed before we can confront the enemy outside. The threat, the enemy, is sexist thought and behavior,”
Bell Hooks