How “Girl Not for Girls” Became a Favorite Internet Insult

Madison Tate recently faced some backlash online after her post about Madison Beer having “no charisma” went viral. “Full disclosure, I don’t know much about Madison Beer,” Tate, a 20-something actress from New York, tells me. “She seems very beautiful. She seems to be talented. I don’t invest more than that.” However, Beer stans disagreed with the publication. Their attack of choice? Tait’s accusation is that she is not a girl.

“It annoys me that they’re always going, ‘Wow, I guess you’re just not a girly girl.’ That’s not a good look, 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,'” says Tate. Girls Girls seems to have lost the plot. .

A girl for girls is not new; she’s been around since at least my middle school days—carrying a spare tampon in her purse, willingly sharing fashion and beauty tips, always standing up for women’s rights…and women’s injustices. But lately this term has become a weapon. Women who were called “No girl girl” in the last year and changes include Ariana Grande, after her relationship with then-married Evil co-author Ethan Slater (including his ex-wife Lily Jay); ice spice, amid her recent drama with several other industry women; Rory Gilmore from Gilmore Girls; and several Bravo members and Island of love universes of reality.

Their alleged crimes? Everything from major prohibitions, like “kidnapping” another woman’s husband, to minor insults, like refusing to take someone’s side in a peer dispute or just not being very nice. As a writer whose views occasionally reach a mainstream audience, I’ve been accused of not being a girl myself on several occasions—in one instance, because I wrote that some women do dress for the male gaze. Yes, “not for a girl” is now an offensive word for anything and everything, an easy replacement for “bitch”, which appeared as soon as calling someone a “bitch” went out of style. (To call a woman a whore is No the behavior of a girl is a girl.) Saying that someone is not a girl takes pleasure in isolating, excluding, and insulting another person under the safe guise of solidarity, while also signaling that they themselves are part of a group. as Maria Santa Poggi wrote for Ale in Februarythe term “girl-girl” has become “terribly exclusionary, considering which girl has access to a sorority depending on what kind of girl it happens.”

Even on “Housewives,” a franchise built on interpersonal turmoil, feuds, and drama between women flaunting migraine-inducing wealth, “not for girls” has become common code. as Nicola Fumoprofessional writer and amateur Real Housewives researcher, tells me, “They used to use the word ‘bullying’ … but now it’s changed to ‘she’s not really a girls’ girl,'” Fumo says.

We’ve seen it all before: the term “pick me,” for example, has been used to describe women who degrade other women in order to attract men; Now, any woman who expresses a dissenting opinion can be called a “pick me.” What was once a useful term for a certain type of behavior has been transformed into an all-encompassing insult. Since these terms seem to refer to a woman who is unkind to other women, they can be used in such a way that others the images that have historically been hurled at us are not — especially from men. In fact, part of their appeal is that you’ll hardly ever hear a man call someone “pick me” or “not a girly girl” at all.

All of this has coincided, though not coincidentally, with an emphasis on girlhood in online and pop culture. A math girl! Girls dinner! Aesthetic clean girl! At the peak of everything, girl girl! in girl’s yeargirlish partisanship has become mandatory, and now the alternative is tantamount to treason.

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

Many of my friends have told me that they would be devastated if they were considered “not girls”. “I would cry!” said one. Elsewhere on the internet, there are tons of posts from women saying they find it the ultimate insult, even saying that they need to be institutionalized, Girl, interrupted– style, cope.

Unlike simply being called selfish or mean, which many of us will occasionally deal with when we hear that we’re “not girls,” it can feel like an insult to our entire worldview—like being a bad feminist or not a feminist. all. As of 202061% of women in the United States identify as feminists, rising to 68% for women ages 18 to 29, 72% for women with at least a bachelor’s degree, and 75% for women who lean Democratic. Over the past four years, with the cancellation of Roe v. Wade and the rise of TikTok feminismI bet those numbers have gone even higher.

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

“I think that feminist solidarity formed around a specific issue — around feelings of marginalization, discrimination, sexual violence, domestic violence, labor issues, reproductive issues — is very important,” she says. Dr. Sara Banet-Weiserdean of the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania and author 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” mentality is an example of what she calls popular feminism. “The politics of popular feminism is an individual politics. “Be sure. You’re beautiful, you’re worth it” are all great things to make us feel good about ourselves, and that’s important. But they don’t address the structural issues that make us feel insecure.”

While “women supporting women” is fine, not everything we do as women is inherently feminist. (And it shouldn’t be!) Recognizing this difference—and being able to criticize actions that actively harm women—is an important part of the feminist project. But a girl’s girl, it was understood, should be a cheerleader for women, regardless of meaning or consequences. Tate observed that women are often accused on social media of being “not girls for girls” when they discourage others from participating in fast fashion or compulsive shopping — either by not constantly linking to products, or, God forbid, they “clean” the source. . We only want 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 and buy, buy, buy, then you’re not a girl,” Tate says.

These supposedly pro-female terms serve as a free pass to excuse our worst (or even most stereotypically bad) behavior, whether it’s mean gossip or over-the-top shopping. Instead of creating the capacity to understand how these behaviors can hold us back, girl-girl feminism isolates women to be blameless—unless, of course, they think critically about other women.

“If (a girl) assumes that a woman should uncritically support every choice that another woman makes — well, that’s a very regressive ‘you-go-girl’ type of feminism that I truly believe we’re all past,” says Melissa Petroauthor Shame: how to be a woman in the age of snogging. She adds, “If you identify as a ‘girl’ as a way to escape another unwanted identity — like ‘pick me girl’ or any of the countless misogynistic slurs directed exclusively at women — then you’re missing the mark. And yes, there is a long history of such terms — shorthand labels that pit women against women.”

We are still petty and quarreling with each other, just wrapped in a new language.

Tait agrees. “It always strikes me today (how) whenever girls say, ‘I’m a girl for a girl,’ and that’s the end of all their feminism, they’re so eager to turn around and call any other woman, fat or ugly, without having a twinkle in their eye as to whether this is truly a feminist action,” she says.

For the past decade we have all been fed a heavy diet of anti-bullying campaigns and Evil girls and Taylor Swift-style women’s empowerment, make external attachments to other women uncool, at least in theory. We all call ourselves feminists, even if we don’t really know what that means. And while we can all agree that it’s much better than the alternative, it can be pretty superficial at times. We are still petty and quarreling with each other, just wrapped in a new language.

Speaking from my own experience, it pains me to say that I am not a girls’ girl. Look, I love women! I studied feminist philosophy in college! I read mostly female authors! I’m adding women I don’t really know to my close friends list on Instagram! I’ve never said that I prefer to hang out with men because they’re “less dramatic” than women, or otherwise position myself as “not like other girls.” But for those same reasons—and the fact that no one I know in real life has ever accused me of it—I know not to take the “ungirly” insult too seriously. Also: Why not just call me a bitch?