She's not a pick me, you're just a misogynist.

This drives me crazy.

Tiktok’s favourite phrase for any woman who slightly doesn’t fit into peoples expectations. Pick me. The internet definition states that a pick me is ‘a girl who does everything for external, mostly male validation.’

When this phrase first appeared a couple of years ago, it was used to describe women who would put down other women to get the attention of a man. The viral clip of Meredith Gray from greys anatomy saying ‘pick me, choose me, love me.’ Often would play in the background of many TikTok telling their stories of another woman putting one down to get a laugh out of the group of guys they would hang out with. Things like pointing out a wardrobe malfunction or pimple on their face.

But like everything that TikTok touches, it gets overused and misconstrued into another way to hate women. Suddenly, valid critics of nasty girls turned into petty slut shaming rife with jealousy.

All the way from primary school my friend groups have consisted of mainly men. As a young tomboy, I loved being in the football cage at lunchtime, booting the ball as hard as I could. To now in college where my main friends are six guys who I like a lot. This is not because I find it less drama with men, I love my girlfriends just as much. But as an autistic woman, I find that men have a lot less social secrets to navigate around. This means that I am more relaxed around the men in my life due to the lower expectations they have for me.

I know what the girls in my friend group say behind my back. I am not naïve. But I cannot wrap my head around it as they are also friends with the exact same guys. Does this make them a pick me? No it doesn’t.

But apparently me being short, and better friends with the men in my group makes me a pick me. Never one have I put down another woman to make them laugh or to get more attention. I am just simply more funny.

The shit talking got to a point where I got DMed by a girl that I’d never even met sending me paragraphs of abuse and telling me about how I’d made her friend feel left out. The friend that had known all of these people for five years before me. But then I did what every normal people would do: troll. She still glares at me when I walk past her in college.

Girls who overuse the word pick me need to accept the fact that they are no better than any other misogynist.

I feel as I exist in an impossible space. Too feminine to be fully accepted into the male friend group, but too masculine to be accepted into the female friend group. It is exhausting. I don’t know what to do. Do I change and become someone I am not to fit in with people who will continue to talk about me behind my back. Or do I just stay friends with the people who actually like me even though they are the opposite gender.

Easy answer.

this has been an annoyance of mine for a while,

let me know if you agree.

rava