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For part 2 of my mid-year check-in series, click here; for part 1 of my mid-year check-in series, click here!

Hear me out on this one: why on Earth am I talking about a pick-me, aka some kind of social media/TikTok/YouTube trend circulating on the Internet? Well, you can say this is somewhat of an extension of my old hot girl summer guide post encapsulating female friendships because there is a caveat to being (what the kids call nowadays) a “girls’ girl”.

GIRLS’ GIRL

In essence, the girls’ girl prioritizes her relationships and connections with other women in her life such as friends, siblings, mother, relatives, acquaintances, and peers over those with men. She sees women as an integral part of her community and personal development; she knows that she can make it to the top BUT she doesn’t want to be there alone. Oftentimes, she campaigns for women’s rights, safety, well-being, and positive image. Anything seen as feminine should be valued and appreciated, not mocked as something juvenile or regressive.

The downsides of being a girls’ girl are putting too much trust into women who don’t have their best interest and/or the currently popular norm: “all men are trash!”. No, I don’t condone either. Having said that, I completely understand why women don’t trust men at all. The patriarchy has historically harmed women in countless ways, many of them being so extreme that it cost women their lives. We can agree that there are viable men out there, but we should not assume that every man we encounter is a good one. Same goes with other women (more into that later).

I still have a close and healthy relationship with my dad. I’ve had boyfriends. I get along with men very well. Though truth is, I’ve been a girls’ girl through and through, by and by, and time and time again.

Maybe it’s because I grew up with two younger sisters, a mother, a grandmother, and only one father who liked to filter the type of boys we’d befriend and what not, but for as long as I can remember, I can’t even begin to recall any amount of friendships I’ve shared with a guy–in particular, those that ever measured up to the friendships with women. I still have some distant guy friends or amicable acquaintances who happen to be men that I am always excited to see or hear from when I have the chance. Also: as you can see, I LOVE girly anything.

However, personally, guy friends are amazing to attend events with, especially in groups or if we want to try new food and learn something new such as a sport or networking. When it comes to exchanging personal information, emotional value, and/or sharing our grievances and delights on being women, then I lean more into my female friendships.

(I promise we’ll get to the pick-me elaboration, but bear with me on this one!) This isn’t to say I never bothered to try being friends with men. I had a couple of guy friendships that lasted for years in my college experience, but almost all of them ended after I graduated because we respectively grew in separate directions. No hard feelings (in my case as well. For the inc*ls and pick-me ladies who think women bear too many emotional burdens to count, take that!).

But subconsciously, I may or may not have learned very quickly that there is an unspoken trust with women that is absolutely unmatched. Meeting women who want to elevate with me and vice-versa has been one of the greatest life discoveries I’ve ever encountered. From an early age, boys and men were very, very quick to reject me when I felt more insecure. I never looked back. It wasn’t until I traveled more and more into my adulthood where upon conversing with more women, I realize that many women my age and demographic accustomed to otherwise.

PICK-ME’S

Note this: pick-me’s and guys’ girl are not equivalent to each other. You can be a girls’ girl and still be a pick-me. What do I mean by this? Pick-me’s, formerly known as the “not like other girls” girls, are constantly thinking, acting, doing, and seeing in the pursuit of fitting the male gaze as perfectly as possible in hopes that they will encapsulate the epitome of what all men desire AND establish their dominance against other women. Tangibly, they hope to evolve in their relationship with their current man, obtain a man if they are single (by they, I mean the pick-me girlies, not the men), or lure a man, even if he is partnered or married, to move towards her direction. Let’s be honest, pick-me babes do NOT see partnered/married men as off-limits.

See some videos below if you want to school yourself more extensively on what a pick-me is:

Pick-me’s can still have girl friends. Are the friendships high-quality? That’s debatable depending on who you’re speaking to, but it’s usually to no one’s surprise when the pick-me showcases a great deal of resentment, jealousy, and insecurity if they’re not the center of attention in a girls’ group or if they’re not the hotter, prettier, more sought after friend in the relationship. Pick-me’s view other women as a threat to their well-being as opposed to an ally. Never let them start on feminism.

To the pick-me, men are the ultimate prize. Being partnered and married with a man are the gold at the end of the rainbow. Don’t get this twisted, though: more often than not, a pick-me doesn’t wait until a man tells her, let alone shows her, that she’s his “dream girl”. A pick-me usually accepts bare minimum behaviors such as showing up for a date at all even if he’s just gotten back from the gym and was 39 minutes later, texting back after leaving her on read for two weeks, and telling her he loves her on the rare occasion that she’ll brush off that he’s still active on the dating apps. She’ll hardly complain about a man’s wrongdoings and do everything she can to uplift his ego while pushing down the images of other women.

THE GUYS’ GIRL

To keep this one short: the guys’ girl is ultimately a person who identifies as a woman on their standardized tests and job applications but more as a boyish girl (aka “tomboy”), or perhaps a full-on man in any social setting. She’ll gladly share her grievances about men with other women, but she may not necessarily exhibit the same level of trust in female friend prospects as a girls’ girl would.

Still, they’ll be the first to say that they get along with men much better than they do with women–in general, this is derived from personal experience after being wronged by a girl or woman in their past or being shamed for not partaking in the mainstream girly or feminine interests. Think of any male-centric movie with the token female friend in the group. Colloquially, that is the archetype of a guys’ girl. These types of girls may be at the tipping point of becoming a pick-me, but this isn’t always the case.

WHICH ONE IS BETTER?

You may not like the response I have to this question: we all have a little bit of pick-me and a little bit of girls’ girl in us as women. Now, hear me out!

If you live in a patriarchy, you are automatically subjected to pleasing the male gaze, whether in a corporate setting with a bunch of men who could be old enough to be your grandparents or in the local Hollywood nightclub on Sunset Boulevard filled with college hotties and 25-30-something year-olds. Whether you like it or not, our system has constructed women to compete against each other in numerous fields, whether in education, work, law, dating, and everything in between. For as long as we live under men’s rule, we have to figure out how to get it to work for us instead of us working for them.

The good news is that more women are abandoning the belief that there are not enough spaces for more, if not all, women to succeed. We’re embracing more of our femininity. We’re burnt out from attempting to keep up with the patriarchal and capitalistic-driven ideals and standards that change by the business days. There’s greater diversity in beauty, desirability, and success. All of us can see the global consequences of misogyny, specifically those at the expense of women’s health and survival. If you want to know misogyny on a global scale at its very worst: one-child policy, sex-selective abortion, mutilation of girls, domestic violence against foreign wives, bride trafficking, legal abuse of women, and in America: restrictions on abortion.

The pick-me in myself was actually louder when I found myself in relationships with men who were not healthy for me whatsoever and when I naturally spent less time with my girl friends. Yes, I am ashamed to say that I tried being a “not like the other girls” girl for a hot minute–particularly, with men who wanted 50/50 and liked taking advantage of my feminist ideals. Gosh, it felt so unnatural. Currently, I’m leaning back into what flows easily, which is being a girls’ girl. I can still balance out having a partner if I wanted to, but I don’t know…for now, being immersed in my female friendships is pretty darn sweet.

At the end of the day, I talk about all this because each type of girl I’ve discussed in this post needs to heal a different avenue of themselves. Wounded feminine energy comes in many forms. Understand that the pick-me is also a victim of insecurity, scarcity, and hardship that deserves some compassion. Men need to value their mental health and have these important conversations about their struggles (though women should not be the ones liable for being the catalyst for that). Women don’t have to fight for that one seat at the table of nobody else but high-status men. We can make our own table at their level, perhaps one that’s even mightier.

Because nobody should ever, ever, underestimate the power that women hold when they know their worth.