While being nice to other women is something most of us can get behind, the “girl’s girl” thing has gone way overboard. 

What was meant to be a source of liberation and open communication between women on the importance of our shared experiences and social bonds turned into yet another avenue for surveillance.

The girl’s girl is the ultimate best friend to have in your corner. She knows all of the best makeup hacks, never gatekeeps where she gets her pristine wardrobe and has a vast network of female friends who she routinely keeps in check, periodically evaluating how well they measure up as women and fellow “girl’s girls.”

The “pick-me girl” is the yang to her yin.

She has primarily, or only, male friends whom she routinely jests with about stereotypically feminine interests, mocking the very grounds that her counterpart is founded upon. She’s “not like the other girls” and isn’t afraid to point out her supposed superiority in her adherence to the male fantasy of an ideal woman. 

The fantasy she embodies rests upon the assumption that what makes her more appealing is her lack of womanliness — in that her internalized misogyny has led her to being exceptional somehow; that selling out and emphasizing one’s masculine inclinations in this way is an easy, cheap way to male adoration. She’s natural. She doesn’t wear makeup or adorn herself excessively. At least she says she doesn’t. 

What began as a reactionary, and quite funny, satirization of internalized misogyny, has gone full force in the other direction, turning into a rigid, cautionary guide on how to “correctly” be an ally to other women. These guidelines are ridiculous in execution and origin, making anyone who regurgitates them sound like an internet-era Regina George.

It’s reached a point where the substance that differentiates these two archetypes is now oversimplified. 

I worry that tomboyish qualities are synonymous with pick-me behavior, and conventional femininity is being sold back to us as revolutionary or some ultimate form of solidarity when it flat-out isn’t. 

Nasra Abdi, a second-year student at the University of Minnesota, said the identification of women as pick-me’s can become lost in translation in favor of more aesthetic designators. 

“I feel like, to an extent, it is personality, for sure,” Abdi said. “Other times I feel like it’s just like somebody could appear to be a pick-me, even when they’re not actually showing any signs of being one.”

Our visceral disgust for the “pick-me” reflects more on our disdain for women we perceive as desperate or flirtatious, or it becomes an avenue to project jealousy. Don’t like that a woman is receiving male attention? Call her a pick-me girl, and watch the group slowly turn on her! It’s become a more woke and current way of describing a promiscuous woman, rather than some other derogatory catch-alls.

Maybe the idea that one may not need a 15-step beauty routine to be attractive throws us off when that’s all we’ve been exposed to for the majority of our lives as women and consumers. 

Men hold a majority of executive positions in the beauty sector. Women are the ones who are ultimately most harmed when abandoned by friends and acquaintances over something as trivial as the amount of pigmented microplastic landfill-fodder we lather on our faces. 

Can’t it be accepted that we should all be nice to each other and not prioritize male attention over the safety or integrity of our long-term female friendships? 

Why do we feel the need to complicate things so much, designating certain aesthetic or personal preferences as somehow doing femininity, or feminism, wrong? 

I know that most of the ire behind the makeup-or-no-makeup discourse revolves around not the cosmetics themselves, but the loud proclamations of whether or not one chooses to indulge in them on a regular or heavy basis. 

Even if someone feels the need to announce their lack of makeup artistry, who does it realistically harm? I see no world where being kind of thirsty for male attention is more exclusionary than casting out other women based on some minor social indiscretions. 

After all, the sting behind the pick-me label is especially strong because it comes from other women. Aren’t we supposed to be looking out for each other here? Like it or not, we harm each other by doing this. 

What makes a pick-me is usually not some twisted desire for male validation over all else, it’s repeated alienation from other women, leading to a feedback loop informed by unreliable female friends and acquaintances. 

Alienation will never drive more supporters to any cause. We as women are so incredibly susceptible to social engineering and propaganda regulating our gender performance. So why are we choosing to do this to ourselves and each other? 

If someone is a pick-me, in that she routinely puts her friends in awkward or even dangerous positions to gain the upper hand for the sake of male validation, then that warrants an appropriate response. 

The choice is ours.

Differentiating an actual pick-me from a socially awkward tomboy should be cut and dry. What if instead of ex-communicating so-called pick-me’s, we offered them guidance or legitimate feminine camaraderie?

It’s more detrimental to go around nitpicking every little social misstep or misgiving another woman commits to tear her apart than it is to announce one’s short stature, boast a lack of makeup or hair styling aptitude or even throw oneself at any male in proximity. 

The former does more harm than good to female friendships, reinforcing the unfortunate and untrue stereotype that girls are catty and difficult to contend with, and the latter is just sleazy behavior that anyone with any modicum of social awareness knows reeks of desperation. 

Diane Cormany, teaching associate professor at the Hubbard School of Journalism and Mass Communication, said according to a recent study, female friendships have correlated with better stress responses.

“Women manage stress differently, and traditionally, research into stress has only looked at men,” Cormany said. “When they started looking into women, there wasn’t as much of that stress hormone release, and they kind of hypothesized that it’s because women turn to other women for support. They don’t just internalize, right? They show up for one another, and so that helps with larger things, like life stresses.”

We have a leg up on men in this arena, despite the mean-girl stereotypes. Let’s not lend credence to the naysayers and take a chance on those we may not otherwise. 

To play devil’s advocate, what if those so-called pick-me’s actually don’t intend harm? 

Maybe she doesn’t know how to do eyeliner despite really wanting to learn or isn’t brave enough to ask for guidance. Maybe she is exceptionally short and feels the need to mask her obvious insecurity with layers of overdone self-deprecation. 

We shouldn’t be splitting hairs on such ridiculous differentiations regarding our respective gender performances. 

The only way to truly be a girl’s girl is to watch out for and include other women, regardless of how annoying, desperate or different they may be.