Why It’s Time to Stop Insisting ‘I’m Not Like Other Girls’
Ten years ago, aged fourteen, I was adamant that I was ‘not like other girls’. I didn’t wear makeup, most of my friends were boys, I preferred reading to shopping — and that made me special. Like many other girls my age (and isn’t that ironic) I had convinced myself that girls were divided into two camps: the popular girls, obsessed with image and boys, and the girls who weren’t like other girls. Of course, this is total nonsense. As I grew older, the conviction that my difference from ‘shallow’ girls made me superior to them was replaced by embarrassment at ever having believed that. As an ardent feminist, how could I ever have believed something so blatantly misogynistic? Simply put — that’s what I was taught to believe.
From the time I was old enough to comprehend how society differentiates between boys and girls, I understood that being a girl was the short straw. Hearing boys tell their peers to ‘man up’ and stop being ‘such a girl’ made this abundantly clear. To be considered ‘girly’ is synonymous with being silly and shallow. To be feminine is an insult — and this belief is embedded from childhood. As such, we feel compelled to not only distance ourselves from what is considered ‘girly’, but to also make sure that everybody knows how far removed from that we are. What’s the point of drinking beer and reading books and refusing to brush your hair if nobody knows about it? Thrown into the mix with the brutal hierarchy of secondary school and a dose of teenage insecurity, you have a perfect recipe for internalised misogyny. The idea of being different to ‘other girls’ becomes not only an identity, but a shield. In the face of insecurities, comparisons and criticisms, you have a trump card — nobody can compare you to ‘other girls’ when you’ve made it so obvious that you’re not like them.
Inevitably, boys pick up on this too. Telling a girl that she’s not like other girls is surely a compliment — when a girl already harbours misogynistic ideas of superiority, it’s the perfect way to validate her feelings and further isolate her from her peers. I’ve certainly been told ‘you’re not like other girls’ a few times in my life, and as a teenager it felt like a compliment. As far as I knew, that was what boys wanted. Boys want the classic ‘girl next door’. Boys don’t want girls who take hours to get ready and only wear pink, boys want girls who eat burgers and watch sports. Having grown out of that phase, I truly couldn’t care less what boys want — but when I did care, the ‘I’m not like other girls’ narrative played right into their hands.
Our personal lives are not the only place we watch this narrative play out; it saturates the media and celebrity culture too. Particularly guilty of reinforcing this narrative is Jennifer Lawrence, the perfect embodiment of being unlike other girls. She’s beautiful, she trips over, she makes sure we all know how much she loves pizza; obviously, a girly girl would never admit to liking pizza. She’s relatable, the ultimate ‘Cool Girl’, the girl other girls want to be and boys want to date. Her appeal is built upon being the girl next door — type her name into YouTube and the results are almost exclusively interviews about her Oscars fall, video compilations of her ‘iconic’ funny moments and, of course, plenty of clips of her talking about food. Lawrence is a successful actress, a keen participant in a variety of good causes, and the voice behind some undeniably offensive statements and actions. But this fades into insignificance compared to our fascination with her ‘Cool Girl’ persona — when you’re clumsy, goofy and pretty, why would anything else matter?
Whether you’ve tried to be the ‘Cool Girl’, the nerdy girl or the manic pixie dream girl, most of us have at some point tried to set ourselves aside from the classic idea of femininity. But the truth is that we are like other girls, and that shouldn’t be a source of shame. Regardless of hobbies, interests or life choices, we are inextricably united by our womanhood. Rather than tearing each other down, it is our job to celebrate and empower each other — after all, if we don’t support each other, who else will? Of course, this isn’t to say that we shouldn’t be able to call other women out for genuine wrongdoing; we just shouldn’t call other women out purely for how they choose to live their lives. There’s no wrong way to be a woman, but there is a wrong way to perceive womanhood, and the more we police each other’s femininity the more vulnerable to misogyny we become. Now, if a man tells me that I’m ‘not like other girls’, I tell them that I am. That to be like other girls is a pleasure. That there isn’t a superior way to experience womanhood, and that whoever these ‘other girls’ may be, they’re doing great. We’re all women, sisters, friends; we’re far more similar than we are different, and the more we empower each other, the more powerful we become.
