In recent years, the internet has seen a plethora of memes, YouTube videos, articles and social media posts concerning the ‘not like girls’ phenomenon; and while this phrase is often understood to be dangerous, an anti-feminist statement directed towards a denigration of femininity, I believe the subject is much more interesting, diverse, and complex than what it first seems. The original version of the meme depicts stereotypical women against the quirky, real protagonist, while a newer version makes fun of the original showing how ‘basic’ those women actually are.
Firstly, I would like to discuss the most popular attitude towards ‘not like other girls’: the idea that the women using this expression denigrate femininity. This is due to what is commonly referred to as ‘internalized misogyny’. I am sure most readers are already aware of what this term means, but, generally, it is understood to mean that women are conditioned to associate masculinity with power, and femininity with weakness. The masculine is the ‘default’, and femininity a deviant variation.
Media representation provides a fundamental step towards this association. Women grow up watching movies and reading books which pit girls against each other. The most significant example can be seen in the stereotype of the ‘popular girl’ in Hollywood movies, she who presents extremely feminine traits, as well as a good degree of promiscuity – which leads, invariably, to a sometimes overt, sometimes subtle, slut-shaming. The popular girl is in every way the villain of the story, she is physically and morally opposed to the main character who, usually, presents more masculine traits, is ‘quirky’ and not boy-crazy.
‘Not like other girls’ is thus associated with this vapid and vain representation of femininity. Often discussed as being a phase, a necessary step towards one’s realization of individuality, almost a physiological reaction to seeing women depicted in media as empty robots. ‘If girls only think about make-up and boys, and I do not, because I am a complex human being, then I must be not like other girls’.
Unfortunately, this phenomenon has led to an ulterior layer of ridiculing women: as the media derides feminine women, 'not like other girls’ has now become a memeable format, a way to make fun of girls who feel ‘different’ but are instead basic.
And whilst, fortunately, we have recently seen a turning point in these memes, which show a more productive and wholesome view of the phenomenon, where girls despite their different interests manage to become friends – or even girlfriends, as seen in a version ‘re-appropriated’ by the LGBTQ+ community – I believe that there is a side of the discussion massively underrepresented: what happens when women truly are ‘not like other girls’?
It needs to be stated that this question is provocative, more than factual, as what makes one person a ‘woman’ is strongly dependent on their culture and view of the world and gender. We can’t effectively sum up ‘womanhood’ in a neat and defined category but, for the sake of this discussion, what we can accept is that, socially, there are a series of traits commonly associated with femininity. Unfortunately, this means that deviation from these traits is considered dangerous.
I am aware that this statement may sound a little dramatic, however, the history of gender in the western world is based on the necessary opposition between male and female, a clean, sacred division.
Nowhere is this danger clearer, than in the historical concept of witchcraft. While there is an academic debate on whether witch-hunting was ‘gender-specific’ (only concerning women) or ‘gender-related’ (mostly concerning women), it is undeniable that witches were figures historically tied to a destabilization of the gender-binary and to, crucially for this discussion, queerness.
The witch, thus, who shows that the gender binary is not absolute nor a stable structure, and that not everyone will fit into a biologically defined category, must be shunned, punished, tortured and murdered in order to bring the world back to order.
If you will excuse the historical digression, this leads back to our discussion.
Just like witches, who disobeyed and crossed the borders between genders, women who do not conform to gender norms, perhaps because they are queer, trans, non-binary or simply present gender in a different way, are socially punished and ostracized. In addition, witch hunting, once performed through torture and execution, is now reduced to social exclusion and bullying by other women. Girls, especially young girls in schools or even earlier, are not allowed in ‘female’ spaces by their peers, too young to understand the complexities of gender. This reinforces hetero and cis normativity the same way burning a witch does; ridiculing women who do not fit into gender categories brings the world back to that comforting, non-threatening zone defined by the male-female binary. ‘Not like other girls’ becomes the reaction to this type of exclusion. For gender nonconforming women, this can be a deeply traumatizing experience.
Nonetheless, this article is not meant to condone the disdain and ridicule of femininity, even in its extreme form. We are at an impasse: on one side, women who have been hurt by gender norms and have turned to a hatred of femininity; on the other, women who are perhaps too young to understand the implications of their actions and similarly bound by the societal view of gender.
Is there any way to go forward? As good as anti-bullying campaigns are, as long as gender will be considered by society as an immutable and fixed concept, this problem will persist. We need a revolutionized view of gender, free from biological boundaries, then perhaps, everyone will be free to be an individual, and not just a girl, anymore.
Edited by Charlotte Lewis (Editor-in-chief)
Image courtesy of History.com -https://www.history.com/topics/colonial-america/salem-witch-trials
Bibliography:
On witchcraft:
Oldridge, Darren, ed., The Witchcraft Reader (London: Routledge, 2002)
Purkiss, Diane, The Witch in History (London: Routledge, 1996)
Historical texts:
King James I, Daemonologie (Project Gutenberg, 2008)
Kramer, Heinrich and James Sprenger, Malleus Maleficarum (Mineola: Dover Publications, 1948)
More on 'not like other girls' can be found at: https://www.reddit.com/r/notlikeothergirls/
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