For those of you that are not sure what a ‘Pick Me’ is, Urban Dictionary defines it as “a person who begs for the attention, acceptance and approval of a certain group in different things they say. In most case, it’s to attain the attention, acceptance and approval of the opposite sex.”
Now, while this definition appears to be gender-neutral, a simple scroll through Twitter will tell you that it is definitely a phrase that is assigned to a certain type of woman.
Just in case you are still unsure about what a ‘Pick Me’ person is here are a few tweets from the Twitter hashtag #TweetLikeAPickMe, to try and help clear things up.
All that education is making y’all self-sufficient. A real woman doesn’t need to read anything but her man’s nonverbal communication. Anticipate his needs and meet them before he asks. But y’all keep having opinions with all that education and stay single. #TweetLikeAPickMe
— Devyn (@4DevynSake) June 27, 2018
I prefer staying in and folding clothes while I listen to Beethoven to being in the club twerking to Cardi B. My man would never have to worry about a thing because I’ll be ironing his underwear ready for his next “appointment”.
— Muyaayu? (@nalwovie) June 27, 2018
Every night I pray the Lord will make me a better woman so my man will have a reason to stay faithful to me #TweetLikeAPickMe pic.twitter.com/kv5ruAqLnN
— im too much mouth and I talk to much (@yagirltoomuch) June 25, 2018
My man will never have to second guess nothing. I don’t ever go out and I don’t have friends. I’ll never cheat on him or look at any man. I sit home all day catering to him like a real woman should. #TweetLikeAPickMe
— Lala (@laurp24) June 28, 2018
While these tweets are clearly hilarious exaggerations of typical ‘Pick Me’ logic, and it is easy to find the humour in the ignorance of some women, the reality is that there are so many girls out there that happily throw other women under the bus or lower their own standards simply for male attention.
We all know that girl who doesn’t identify as a feminist because she thinks they are these man-hating crazy people or (as I have actually had one girl say to me) because she doesn’t think women deserve equal rights! And we all know that girl who in every social situation will make a joke that women belong in the kitchen, in order to get a laugh and a pat on the back from the male members of the group. Both examples of classic ‘Pick Me’ mentality.
Not only is a ‘Pick Me’s’ desire for affirmation from men hugely irritating to see, but it is also an expression of these women’s internalised misogyny and this irritates me for a number of reasons.
1.They are enabling male entitlement to the ‘perfect’ woman.
Comments made by these ‘Pick Me’s’ put pressure on women to meet the impossibly high standards expected of a woman in a relationship. They enforce the old fashioned ideas that women should be cooking dinner every night for her husband, ironing his underwear, maintaining a beautiful home, paying bills, and doing all of it in high heels with beautifully blown-out locks so that she can be as sexually appealing as possible to her man 24/7.
2.They shame other women for living a life for themselves.
We are in 2020, and the problem with this ‘Pick Me’ idealised relationship is that is it not how women want to live their lives anymore. More and more women are exploring different kinds of dating options and sexual relationships, yet when they stray from what we would call a ‘traditional’ kind of relationship,
‘Pick Me’s’ brand them a ‘slut’ and whisper about them behind their backs, and honestly, I’m not here for it. For the first time ever women are unapologetically out here living their best lives and other women should be supporting them and sticking together, not dragging them down.
3. The ‘Pick Me’ is the female equivalent of ‘The Nice Guy’
For those that don’t know ‘The Nice Guy’ is a term that emerged in the 2000s as a way of describing the kind of man who thought that treating a woman with basic kindness entitled them to sex. The key similarity between the the ‘Pick Me’ and ‘The Nice Guy’ is that when both of these people are rejected, they don’t direct their anger towards themselves thinking perhaps they were in the wrong, but rather direct their anger towards other women.
‘The Nice Guy’ is a product of misogyny, in which he believes women should settle for any man that is simply being ‘nice’ to them. The ‘Pick Me’ is also a product of misogyny as she believes that women should, in effect, be subservient to men and tolerate any misbehaviour on the man’s part and hates on any other woman that does not feel the same way.
For me, the whole ‘Pick Me’ mindset is worrying as it enforces what young girls are told as children. We are told that boys want a good girl, that if we sit quietly, follow the rules, flash a smile and look pretty all of the time then we will get our Prince Charming. Feeding impressionable young girls this logic does several things that I am not okay with. It suggests that a girls behaviour is what gets her a man, not her mind, her intelligence, her humour but simply her ability to follow rules. Furthermore, it implies that a women’s life is not complete, or perhaps even started, until she has a man. This causes young girls to focus on boys rather than focusing on their own identity and their own growth into a strong and independent woman.
We are in an age where finally girls can be whatever they want to be. So please, from one girl to another, don’t be a ‘Pick Me.’
Photo: A.L. via Unsplash
