Not just a girl
Illustration by Bryce Griego.
Natalie McEwan, Opinions and Humor Editor
If there’s one phrase that has dominated social media in the past year, it would be, “But I’m just a girl!” What started as a silly saying online has become increasingly more extreme, and it has spread into real-life spaces and consumer trends.
I hear my friends and I even repeat it in real life when we don’t want to do something, and I hear more and more women romanticizing tradwives. I find this concerning, especially given the growing right-wing shift in politics.
As women, I believe we need to be careful about what we repeat, even as a joke. Platforms like TikTok have algorithms that can quickly pull you down a rabbit hole. It might start harmless — a joke about how hard it is being a girl turns into coquette fashion videos, turns into “girl dinner,” turns into the “Pink Pilates Princess” trend — which then can turn into videos promoting eating disorders, videos romanticizing the “stay at home girlfriend” and even right-wing tradwives.
These trends are also designed to sell us products. Teen fashion brands like Hollister have new collections filled with frills, bows and pink. Wellness influencers define “self-care” as a long, detailed beauty routine filled with products and procedures we don’t need. At what point do we stray from self-care into vanity?
What I find most concerning is not the consumerism of this growing trend — I worry because this trend infantilizes us and we are eating it up. “I’m just a girl” is a response saying that we cannot do something.
Back when I was in elementary school, “You run like a girl” was an insult. It positioned a girl as someone lesser, someone incapable, someone weak. By looking at words alone, how is “I’m just a girl” any different?
But it is not words alone. Trends don’t exist in a vacuum. Jokes don’t exist without context. We live under an administration where our vice president once stated no-fault divorce is “one of the great tricks that I think the sexual revolution pulled on the American populace.” We live in a country where twelve states have total abortion bans and six restrict abortion to the first trimester.
So, the next time you have the urge to throw your hands up and exclaim, “I’m just a girl!” ask yourself — who are you really laughing at? Is it men? Societal expectations? Or is it a mirror turned around on yourself?
