The “Pick me girl” is a trend or stereotype, that has been gaining popularity in recent years. According to Urban Dictionary, to define a “pick me, girl”, they are girls who try to impress boys by saying there are “not like the other girls”. They talk about how they only hang out with male friends as they believe that girls are too much drama and often try to act more guy-like. This stereotype tends to be very problematic as it is rooted in internalized misogyny. Pick me girls tend to seek male validation by putting down other girls for being feminine and often add fuel by playing into misogynistic stereotypes. 

The trend of the pick me girl began often as tropes in teen movies where the main female characters are “not like the other girls”. They don’t wear make-up and usually act non-feminine. Guys are enthralled by them because they act so different from the girls that they are used to. An example is the Disney movie Zapped. The main character in the film, Zoey Stevens, played by Zendaya, could be considered a pick me girl. She’s different from the other girls and is more tomboyish. The guy in question is attracted to her because of this. The movie tends to portray the female antagonist as the stereotypical mean girl who is shown as really feminine and rude. While the character Zoey does not necessarily put down the antagonist for being feminine, the motion still stands. Because of how the movie makes these two characters, the ideas of a pick me are very present. This movie influences how young girls see things. They watch movies such as this and see what kind of girl gets the guy and which one doesn’t. They see the more feminine girls in movies as rude and horrible and believe that many girls who dress that way act that way. This doesn’t feed into the stereotype, but rather it helped create it. 

Another movie that is guilty of doing the same thing is twilight. Twilight is another movie that creates the main female character as “unusual” and again “not like the other girls”. Twilight was such a huge and popular movie that in some ways it did influence a wave of new trends around the early 2000s. With that being said, the pick me, girl trend could have been easily influenced by the Twilight movies. 

The Pick Me girl trend is problematic because of the surrounding internalized misogyny. Girls putting down other girls for being too feminine, all while trying to gain a male’s approval is most differently a part of misogyny-whether they know it or not. The rise in the pick me girl trend along with the endless amount of movies portraying main female characters as different from the other girls puts the idea in young teenage girls heads that they need to act less feminine or less than the stereotypical girl, just for the attention of a guy they like. It’s time that we as a society leave behind this trend of misogyny once and for all.