A clear manifestation of this is the fixation, particularly seen on social media, on being ‘not like other girls.’ The phrase expresses a desire to be seen as an individual and to escape from the stereotypes of femininity imposed on women by society and the media. In a society increasingly celebratory of individualism and uniqueness, almost to an extreme extent, it is easy to understand the inclination to distance ourselves from these frustratingly reductive stereotypes.
However, subtext of the phrase is that being ‘like other girls’ is in some way wrong, when, in reality, the only thing wrong is the patriarchal obsession with lumping all women in the same category.
Although the ‘not like other girls’ movement has become more potent on social media over the past few years, it is nothing new. Examples of this ideology can be seen all through pop culture, particularly from the 2000s. Perhaps most notably in the lyrics of Taylor Swift’s song ‘You Belong with Me:’
‘She wears short skirts, I wear t-shirts,
She’s cheer captain, and I’m on the bleachers.’
Obviously, the point of this conversation is not to compete for a certain guy, and both ‘short skirts’ and ‘t-shirts’ are valid choices of clothing, but the context of the song clearly favours the girl wearing ‘t-shirts.’ Equally, women who take this message too far are also hated, known as ‘pick-me girls’ characterised by wanting to be ‘one of the guys.’
Like many manifestations of misogyny, this creates a situation in which women cannot win; we are either too feminine, making us superficial and uninteresting, or not feminine enough and trying too hard to escape it. The problem lies in the continual comparison between women, and so, instead, we should celebrate the fact that we all have an individual set of interests and traits regardless of how others may perceive them.
