#nlog

[The tradition of female transvestism in early modern Europe, by R. M. Dekkker and L. van de Pol]

If a woman's strengths and interests are associated with being feminine, such as cooking or enjoying nice clothes or being kind and compassionate, the entire fandom jumps on her as stereotypical or weak. It's seen as cool to bash on "women's work", never mind that your average misogynist has been doing it for decades, hell, centuries, and the jobs that are mocked as women's work are actually pretty essential to humans surviving and thriving.

And then, of course, if a woman shows the slightest hint of nonconformity, the entire fandom jumps on her because "oh!! she's trying to be not like other girls!! she wants male attention so bad!!" It doesn't matter how she is to the other girls in her life, if she wears combat boots and listens to punk instead of Taylor Swift, she clearly hates every other woman ever according to certain parts of fandom. It couldn't be that she's neurodivergent or LGBT or hell, even just a tomboy, she has to hate every other girl on the planet. /sarcasm

AND JUST TO CLARIFY. These tropes can genuinely be negatively done. The traditionally feminine girl can be a weak character and the tomboy girl can be an ass. But when you're calling a girl a "pick me" just because she doesn't live up to your idea of what a woman should look like or what you think feminism is... congratulations. You've simply repackaged sexism and called it woke. And lots of girls who see this crap online are going to suffer for it but hey, it was never actually about them, so who cares, right? /sarcasm

People took this very necessary and cathartic term and overused and abused it to the point where it’s just used to degrade women no matter what they do, instead of for the women that genuinely think they’re better than other girls or humble brag about being different. Most don’t even know what pick-me means anymore. It’s now just being used for women who don’t follow all social norms, women who are friends with guys, or even over-the-top feminine women (like calling Hachiko from Nana a pick-me is just…. really??)

A pick-me is a girl who puts other girls down to make herself seem more attractive.

A pick-me says things like “I only hang out with guys because girls are too much drama.”

A pick-me is those girls on Marilyn Manson or other rock youtube videos (around 2013 it was an epidemic, not sure if it still is) talking about how her generation sucks and going “teehee I bet I’m the only girl here” in hordes.

A pick-me is a conservative woman who kisses up to men and hates feminism, that the lonely desperate horny incel men don’t want to touch with a 10 foot pole.

Now the term is just being used to shit on women you don’t like, and its lost its meaning. A lot of insecure women are using it on women who just happen to have a lot of guy friends and aren’t even weird or cringey about it.

You can’t be a girl and have a guy friend group anymore. And that is a form of seeing gender as real and wanting people to conform to gender roles. It’s like the basic straight people that don’t want their partners to have friends of the opposite sex or breathe the same air as people of the opposite sex. It’s lame and regressive.

At that point you’re literally being the insecure disney channel mean girl. Like you’re actually being what pick-me’s think all other girls are like.

In the early 2010’s you HAD to be “not like other girls” and have supposedly niche interests and the pick-me term wasn’t around yet and everyone just ate this up. The tumblr posts of “Other Girls vs Me” that blatantly tore down other girls as well as the pick-me YouTube comments were met with overwhelming love and positive reception.

But now it’s so far in the other direction that now you HAVE to be friends with only girls and like Taylor Swift (who ironically wrote the most pick-me song of a lifetime??) and be girly but not too girly.

A lot of people complaining about NLOGs say that they have nothing against gnc female characters, they just don't like HOW they are portrayed...and I believe them, but sometimes, the way they talk about the NLOG in question makes me wonder whether they are actually ok with a female character being gender non conforming, because the NLOG growth Is often associated with her overcoming her "internalized misogyny" by learning to love and embrace traditional femininity.

And I mean, sometimes It happens, but come on, you really think that every single tomboy/masc girl Is an internally misogynyst who just has to learn the joy of ✨girly girliness✨ to grow as a person?

And don't tell me I'm making things up, just look at the way people talk about NLOG characters, it's always:

"Ugh, another strong female character who doesn't like dresses and makeup, why cannot women be STRONG and FEMININE ?" (and then the female characters they're complaining about is a completely feminine woman with full makeup wearing *gasp* pants).

"Why cannot female characters be soft, kind and nurturing? Why do they always to act like men?" (Where acting like men means being...assertive, bold, loud, authoritative...yeah).

"I want a female character who rejects femininity because she has been forced to perform It all her life...and then she learns ✨on her own terms✨that actually makeup, pink ,dresses and embroidery are the Best Thing in the World and becomes the Girliest Girl that ever Girled™".

This is the argument that annoys me the most, the idea that a person who has been forced into femininity, if left free, will eventually start to love and perform it but "on her own terms", whatever that means. What if "her own terms" are never performing femininity again? Why do you struggle to understand that some people will NEVER like femininity, no matter how "gently" you push it on them? You really think that femininity Is only empowering and never traumatizing?

And then there's my favorite people *sarcasm alert*, the ones that say that female characters being masculine and acting "like men" (whatever that means) instead of being soft, kind and waifish Is unfeminist because It implies that women must reject femininity to be strong.

See what rubs me wrong? The fact that the complaints about NLOGs center the supposed "unfemininity" of the character, as if It's a bad thing by itself and as if female characters aren't overwhelmingly feminine.

And again, there's a conversation to be had about how femininity Is considered generally frivolous and women are expected to look effortlessly good, but I CANNOT take you seriously when you say that masc women dominate the media, when the icky masc women oppressing girly girls you're complaining about look like this:

ID 1: a picture of princess Peach from Super Mario. She's a girl with long, blonde hair and blue eyes, wearing a bright pink and white racing suit and holding a halberd. She has a determined expression.

ID 2 : a picture of Eloise Bridgerton from Bridgerton. She's a young woman with medium lenght wavy hair, Hazel eyes and white skin. She's wearing a pale green empire waist dress with puffy sleeves. She's standing and holding a book.

ID 3: a picture of Rhaenyra Targaryen from House of the dragon. She's a woman with long, straight light blonde hair, blue eyes and white skin. She's standing and wearing a long, black gown with gold and red embroidery with dragon motifs.

I'm not making up a strawman, I've seen way too many people complaining that alle the above characters are too masculine, and not just whiny conservatives. In fact, talking about HOTD, I find It quite interesting that people are complaining that Rhaenyra Is not feminine enough, but there are less complaints that Baela Is not a tomboy like she was in the book. In fact, I've seen several users say that Baela being more feminine Is better, becausebit shows that WoMeN cAn Be StRoNg AnD FeMiNiNe!!1!1!

It makes me think that your problem Is not feminine female characters being disparaged (as if masculine female characters aren't), but gnc female characters existing at all.

If you say that you have nothing against masc female characters, why would you make learning to love femininity and overcoming misogyny coincide?

Unless you think being uncomfortable with femininity Is misogyny by itself.

It was because when I talked to other girls about how stupid I thought our prescribed stereotypes and roles were, instead of agreeing with me they actually said that they wanted to fit into those roles. They said they liked being controlled by boys and wanted nothing more than to be a stay at home wife and mother under their husband's authority at 20 years old. They said it was true that they hated intellectual pursuits, video games, computers, etc. That a woman's role is to be stereotypically feminine and quiet and dainty.

I couldn't understand why they'd want any of that at all. So despite growing up with the same cultural conditioning as them, I decided I must not be like other girls. That I was different and weird, and boy was I punished for that. The role of the virgin wife was the good role for girls to be, and everyone who deviated from it at all was bullied ruthlessly and whispered about and mocked by boys and girls alike.