How “Not A Girl’s Girl” Became The Internet’s Favorite Insult

Madison Tayt recently faced some flak online after her post saying Madison Beer has “no charisma” went viral. “Full disclosure, I don’t know much about Madison Beer,” Tayt, a 20-year-old actor from New York, tells me. “She looks very beautiful. She seems talented. I don’t invest more than that.” However, Beer stans had problems with the post. Their favorite attack? She accuses Tayt of not being a girl’s girl.

“The thing that bothers me is that they always come up to you like, ‘Wow, I guess you’re not a girly girl.’ That’s not a good look, honey,’ and then they come back and they’re really eager to say, ‘Well, you’re just jealous because Madison Beer is beautiful and you’re an ugly, fat whore,'” Tayt says. The girl’s girls, it seems, have lost the plot.

The “girl’s face” is not new; she’s been around since at least my middle school days—carrying a spare tampon in her purse, eager to trade fashion and beauty tips, always standing up for women’s rights…and women’s wrongs. But recently, the term has been weaponized. The women who were called “not a girl’s girl” in last year and change include Ariana Grande, following her relationship with the then-still-married River co-star Ethan Slater (by his ex-wife, Lily Jay, in particular); ice spice, amid her recent drama with several other women in the industry; Rory Gilmore from The Gilmore Girls; and several members of Bravo and Island of Love universes of reality.

their alleged crimes? Everything from major refusals like “stealing” another woman’s man to minor offenses like refusing to take part in a peer dispute or just not being very nice. As a writer whose opinions occasionally reach a mainstream audience, I’ve been accused more than once of not being a girly girl—in one case, for writing that some women do, in fact, dress for the male gaze . Yes, “not a girly girl” is now an insult for anything and everything—an easy substitute for “bitch” that arrived just as calling someone a “bitch” went out of style. (Calling a woman a bitch is not the girl’s girl’s behavior.) By saying that someone is not a girl’s girl, we get the satisfaction of isolating, excluding and insulting another person under the guise of solidarity, while signaling that she herself is part of the group. That Maria Santa Poggi wrote for elle in Februarythe term “girl’s girl” has become “strangely exclusionary, considering the type of girl allowed into the fraternity depending on what kind of girl it happens to be.”

Even for Housewives, a franchise built on interpersonal ugliness, witchcraft and drama among women flaunting their migraine-inducing wealth, “not a girly girl” has become a common code. That Nicholas Fumoa professional Real Housewives writer and amateur researcher, tells me, “‘Bullying’ used to be the word they used … but now it’s changed to ‘she’s not really a girly girl,'” says Fumo.

We’ve seen all of this before: the term “pick me,” for example, used to describe women who disparage other women for the sake of attracting men; now, any woman who expresses a dissenting opinion can be labeled a “pick me.” What was once a useful term for a certain type of behavior has been turned into a blanket insult. Since these terms ostensibly refer to a woman who is not nice to other women, they are fair game to be thrown around in ways that other the insults historically leveled against us are not—especially by men. Part of their appeal, in fact, is that you’re unlikely to ever hear a man tell someone to “pick me” or “she’s not a girl.”

All of this has coincided, though not coincidentally, with an emphasis on childhood in online and pop culture. Math girl! Girls dinner! Clean face aesthetics! On top of everything, the girl’s face! In year of the girlgirls’ partisanship has become compulsory, and now the alternative amounts to treason.

In the year of the girl, girl partisanship became mandatory, and now the alternative amounts to treason.

Many of my friends have told me that they would be devastated if they were considered “a girl’s girl”. “I would cry!” said one. Elsewhere online, there are plenty of posts from women who say they consider it the ultimate insult, going so far as to say they should be institutionalized, Girl, interrupted-style, to face.

Unlike simply being called selfish or mean, something many of us would sometimes cop to, hearing that we’re not “a girl’s girl” can be an affront to our entire worldview—similar to being a bad feminist or not a feminist at all. From 202061% of women in the United States identify as feminists, 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 women who lean democrat. In the last four years, with the overthrow Roe v. Wade and the the rise of TikTok feminismi’d bet those numbers have gone up even more.

But they shouldn’t be feminists permissive to criticize women? Isn’t this, in fact, an important element of feminism?

“I think it’s very important that feminist solidarity is formed around an issue – around feeling marginalized, around us being discriminated against, sexual violence, domestic violence, work issues, reproductive issues,” she says Dr. Sarah Banet-Weiserdean of the Annenberg School for Communications at the University of Pennsylvania and author of Empower: 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”—all of these are great for us to feel about ourselves, and they’re important. But it doesn’t address the kind of structural issues that make us feel insecure to begin with.”

While “women standing up for women” is all well and good, not everything we do as women is inherently feminist. (And it shouldn’t be!) Recognizing this 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 was made clear, should be a cheerleader for women, regardless of the implications or consequences. Tayt 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 shopping — either by not consistently linking to products or, the sky protects, “preserving” the source. . We seek only to be affirmed in our actionsregardless of the consequences.

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

These supposedly pro-women terms serve as a free pass to excuse our worst (or even the most stereotypically not-great behavior), whether it’s mean gossip or over-the-top shopping. Rather than creating the capacity to understand how these behaviors can hold us back, girly-girl feminism isolates women from being beyond reproach—unless, of course, they think critically about other women.

“If (the girl’s face) suggests that a woman should uncritically support every choice another woman makes — well, that’s a very regressive, you-go-girl type of feminism, I think honestly we all passed,” he says Melissa Petroauthor of Shame on you: How to be a woman in the age of mortification. She adds: “If you identify as a ‘girl’s girl’ as a way to avoid another unwanted identity – like ‘pick me girl’ or any of the countless misogynistic slurs directed solely at women – then you’re missing the mark. And yes, there is a long history of terms like this—reductive labels that pit women against women.”

We’re still petty and uniting each other, just wrapped in a new language.

Tayt agrees. “The thing that always stands out to me these days (is how) whenever girls say, ‘I’m a girly girl,’ and that’s the end of it, it’s all part of their feminism, they’re so eager to come back and call anything. another fat or ugly woman, without a twinkle in her eye to say if this is actually feminist action,” she says.

Over the past decade, we’ve all been fed a heavy diet of anti-bullying campaigns and bad girls and Taylor Swift-style female empowerment, making the outward choice of other women uncool, at least in theory. We all call ourselves feminists, even if we don’t really know what that means. And yet, we can all agree, it is far superior to the alternative, it can be quite superficial at times. We’re still petty and uniting each other, just wrapped in a new language.

Speaking from personal experience, it stings to be told I’m not a girl. Look, I love women! I took Feminist Philosophy at college! I primarily read female authors! I’m adding women I don’t even really know to my close Instagram friends list! I’ve never been one to talk about preferring to date men because they’re “less dramatic” than women, or otherwise positioned myself as “not like the other girls.” But it’s for the 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 “girl’s girl” insult too seriously. Also: Why don’t you just call me bitch?