How ‘Not A Girl’s Girl’ Became the Internet’s Favorite Insult

Madison Tayt recently faced an online backlash after her post saying that Madison Beer had “no charisma” went viral. “Full disclosure, I don’t know much about Madison Beer,” says Tayt, a 20-something actor in New York City. ‘She seems very beautiful. She seems talented. I don’t invest further than that.” Still, Beer Stans objected to the post. Their favorite attack? Accusing Tayt of not being a girly girl.

“What irritates me is that they always come up to you and say, ‘Wow, I guess you’re just not a girly girl.’ That doesn’t look good, honey,” and then they turn around and really want to say, “Well, you’re just jealous because Madison Beer is beautiful and you’re an ugly, fat whore,” Tayt says. It seems the girl’s girls have lost the plot.

The “girly girl” is not new; she’s been around since my high school days – she keeps a spare tampon in her purse, loves to swap fashion and beauty tips, always supports women’s rights… and women’s abuses. But recently the term has been weaponized. Women who are callednot a girly girl” in The past year and change included Ariana Grande, after her relationship with then still married Bad co-star Ethan Slater (by his ex-wife, Lily Jay, in particular); ice herb, amid her recent drama with several other women from the industry; Rory Gilmore from Gilmore girls; And various members of Bravo And Love Island reality universes.

Their alleged crimes? Everything from big no-no’s, like “stealing” another woman’s husband, to minor offenses, like refusing to take sides in a dispute between peers or just not being very nice. As a writer whose opinions occasionally reach a large audience, I’ve been accused several times of not being a girly girl myself — in one case for writing that some women do indeed dress for the male gaze. Yep, “not a girl’s girl” is now an insult for all kinds of things – an easy replacement for “bitch,” which emerged when someone was called a “bitch” and went out of fashion. (Calling a woman a bitch is not girlish behavior of girls.) By saying that someone is not a girl’s girl, you get the satisfaction of isolating, excluding and insulting someone else under the safe guise of solidarity, while at the same time indicating that she herself is part of the in-group. If Maria Santa Poggi prescribed Elle in Februarythe term ‘girly girl’ has become eerily exclusive, by defining what kind of girl gets access to the sisterhood depending on what kind of girl she just happens to be.”

Even on Housewives, a franchise built on interpersonal woes, feuds and drama among women flaunting migraine-inducing wealth, “not a girly girl” has become a common code. If Nicola Fumoa professional writer and amateur scholar of Real Housewives, tells me, “It used to be that ‘bullying’ was the word they used…but now it’s changed to ‘she’s not really a girly girl,'” says Fumo.

We’ve all seen this before: for example, the term “pick me” is used to describe women who belittle other women to attract men; now any woman who expresses a dissenting opinion can be labeled “choose me.” What was once a useful term for a specific type of behavior has been twisted into an all-encompassing insult. Since these terms seemingly refer to a woman who isn’t nice to other women, they’re fair game to throw around in a way that other insults that have historically been leveled against us are not – especially by men. Part of their appeal is that you’re unlikely to ever hear a man call someone a “pick me” or “not a girly girl.”

This all coincided, but not coincidentally, with the emphasis on girlhood in online and pop culture. Girls math! Girls dinner! Clean girl aesthetic! At the height of it all, the girl’s girl! In the year of the girlgirl partiality became mandatory, and now the alternative amounts to treason.

In the Year of the Girl, girl partiality became mandatory, and now the alternative amounts to treason.

Many of my friends told me that they would be devastated if they were considered “not a girly girl.” “I would cry!” said one. Elsewhere online, there are countless posts from women saying they consider this the ultimate insult, even going so far as to say: they should be institutionalized, Girl, interrupted-style, dealing.

Unlike just being called selfish or mean, something many of us might have to deal with at times, being told we’re “not a girly girl” can feel like an insult to our entire worldview—similar to being a bad feminist, or not a feminist at all. all. From 202061% of women in the United States identify as feminist, a number that rises to 68% for women ages 18 to 29, 72% for women with at least a bachelor’s degree, and 75% for Democratic-leaning women. The past four years, with the overthrow of Roe v. Wade and the rise of TikTok feminismI bet those numbers have risen even higher.

But feminists shouldn’t be allowed criticize women? Isn’t that actually an important element of feminism?

“I think it is very important that feminist solidarity is formed around an issue – around a sense of being marginalized, around the fact that we are discriminated against, sexual violence, domestic violence, labor issues, reproductive issues,” says Dr. Sarah Banet-Weiserdean of the Annenberg School for Communications at the University of Pennsylvania and author of Empowered: Popular Feminism and Popular Misogyny. ‘It’s not about being a girl. It’s not about being a woman.”

According to Banet-Weiser, the “girl’s girl” mentality is an example of what she calls popular feminism. “The politics of popular feminism is individual politics. ‘Be confident. You’re beautiful, you’re worth it’ – those are all great things for us to think about ourselves, and they’re important. But they don’t address the kind of structural problems that make us feel insecure in the first place.”

While “women supporting women” is all well and good, not everything we do as women is inherently feminist. (And it shouldn’t be!) Recognizing that difference – and being able to criticize actions that are actively harmful to women – is a crucial part of the feminist project. But the girl’s girl, it’s made clear, is supposed to be a cheerleader for women, regardless of the implications or consequences. Tayt has noticed that women are often accused of “not being girly girls” on social media when they discourage others from engaging in fast fashion or compulsive purchasing – either by not constantly linking to products or, heaven forbid, by to ‘gatekeeper’ the source. . We only strive to be confirmed in our actionsregardless of the consequences.

“Girls will go online and say, ‘I need to know every detail and every product you buy. And if you don’t give me that so I can go buy, buy, buy, then you’re not a girly girl,” Tayt says.

These supposedly pro-women terms serve as a license to excuse our worst (or even most stereotypically less than stellar) behavior, whether it’s mean gossiping or excessive shopping. Instead of creating the capacity to understand how these behaviors hold us back, girl-girl feminism isolates women from blame—unless, of course, they think critically about other women.

“If it (girl’s girl) is suggesting that a woman should uncritically support every choice another woman makes – well, that’s a very regressive ‘you-go-girl’ type of feminism that I honestly believe we’re all past ,” say Melissa Petroauthor of Shame: How to Be a Woman in the Age of Mortification. She adds, “If you identify as a ‘girly girl’ as a way to avoid some other unwanted identity — like ‘pick me girl’ or any of the other countless misogynistic insults aimed solely at women — then you miss the mark. And yes, there is a long history of these kinds of terms: reductive labels that pit women against women.”

We are still petty and fighting against each other, just wrapped in new language.

Tayt agrees. “What always strikes me these days (is how) when girls say, ‘I’m a girly girl,’ and that’s the end of all their feminism, they want so much to turn around and call everyone other women fat or ugly without even a glimpse in their eyes about whether that is actually feminist action,” she says.

Over the past decade we have all been fed a heavy diet of anti-bullying campaigns Mean girls and female empowerment, Taylor Swift style, bothering other women’s appearance, at least in theory. We all call ourselves feminists, even if we don’t quite know what that means. And while we can all agree that it’s much better than the alternative, it can sometimes be quite superficial. We are still petty and fighting against each other, just wrapped in new language.

Speaking from personal experience, it hurts to hear that I’m not a girly girl. Look, I love women! I took Feminist Philosophy in college! I mainly read female authors! I’m adding women I don’t even really know to my Instagram Close Friends list! I’ve never been the one to say that I prefer being with guys because they’re “less drama” than women, or that I’ve otherwise positioned myself as “not like the other girls.” But it’s for those same reasons – and the fact that no one I know in real life has ever accused me of it – that I know not to take the “not a girly girl” insult too seriously. Also: Why don’t you just call me a bitch?