“You’re not like other girls!” …Well maybe I want to be.

“Wow! You’re really good at math for a girl.”

“You’re not like other girls. You’re so awesome and funny.”

“Woah! Hey! Nice shot! You’re actually pretty good at this, not like other girls.”

These are the kinds of phrases I have heard countless times in my life. I grew up a proud “Tom Boy” and rejected femininity by playing sports, having short hair, and playing with the boys. When I heard these statements, I felt praised. I felt proud. “Yes!” I thought, “I’m not like other girls!” I would constantly be proud that all my friends were boys because “girls are too much drama” and when we would be split up to play hockey in PE in 7th grade, I would ask play on the boys’ court because “the girls don’t play as hard.” I didn’t understand until recently how sad that was.

While these quotes might seem like compliments to an individual, they are a backhanded way of devaluing women and femininity which, in turn, harms the recipient in the long run. If a girl is good at math or is funny or athletic and you say she is “not like other girls,” you implicitly say through your surprise and explicitly with your words that other girls are not good at math or funny or athletic. This is what leads young girls who hear these kinds of “compliments” while growing up to disassociate themselves with other women and any feminine qualities. It teaches them that all these things that are good about them are in opposition to being a girl and reinforces gendered stereotypes. The women who hear this will internalize these implications and it can continue to affect them and alter their behavior their entire lives, causing them to strive for stereotypically masculine qualities and reject their femininity instead of learning to value, appreciate, and embrace it.

This is not in any way to the fault of the individual and can instead be blamed upon the social conditions that both contribute to and are maintained as a result of these ideals. Statements like this perpetuate the ideas that masculinity and femininity exist in opposition and competition and that masculinity is “positive” attributes like being athletic, intelligent, ambitious, witty, and strong whereas femininity is associated with “negative” attributes like being over emotional or social, vanity, weakness, and dependency.

This false dichotomy is a social phenomenon, and throughout our society, qualities and activities, that are associated with masculinity are valued socially and economically more so than those associated with femininity. The reversed causality is also true and attributes and functions that are less socially valuable or economically productive are feminized while their “more important” counterparts are dominated by masculinity. This is especially evident when it comes to labor and occupation stratification, even if the effects seem subtle. Notice your default assumptions when thinking of occupations like Doctor, Nurse, Construction Worker, Secretary. People tend to assume the gender of the person based on their job title and the stereotypes associated with it. Not to mention the wage gap in men and women of the same education levels or even how women’s labor is systematically devalued and exploited in the way that they are expected to work in the home without compensation, especially in the capitalist system as explained by Marx.

Gendered stratification and the discrediting is also prevalent in education, as young men are encouraged to work through problems while young women are told it’s okay to not know. Men and boys are also systematically funneled into STEM fields and encouraged to pursue higher education in these fields while women are emphasized and encouraged to pursue arts, humanities, and social sciences. This may have to do with the fact that masculinity dictates that men be calculating and objective while stereotypical femininity suggests women should excel in social and emotional pursuits. The problem is not only that people are being arbitrarily expected to pursue certain things based on their gender, but also that the fields into which we funnel males carry a higher social status while the fields into which we send females carry a negative social stigma accompanied by questions like “and what will you do with that degree?” which, in reality, could be asked just as poignantly to any college student. This is a huge part of the cycle of the degradation and disparagement of femininity.

And when young women do decide to go into a STEM field or pursue a traditionally masculine career or exhibit stereotypically manly traits?

“Wow, sweetie! That is actually an amazing science project!”

“You are so smart for a girl”

“I’ve never met someone so wonderful before. You’re just not like other girls!”

These statements are so harmful, not only on a social level, but on an individual level where women are taught to compete with their fellow female peers, talk down on and hide their own femininity, and underestimate their own worth and potential because of their gender. They are taught that being like other girls is a bad thing and exhibiting traits ordinarily associated with femininity is negative and something to be ashamed of and even that going into a social science or art-based career is somehow less important and less valid than a STEM field, even if it is what they love. So while, yes, it is a wonderful thing to encourage women who want to exhibit their traits that are seen as masculine or to pursue science and technology, it is also important to encourage women who are and love being feminine and want to go into fields typically dominated by women. As advocated by Luisa Murano, to create true feminist social change we must go beyond gender equality; instead of just giving women the equal opportunity to participate in and perform masculinity to be successful, we need to teach them to be proud of their femininity and erase the negative stigma and ideas that these qualities, fields, and occupations are in any way less than those dominated by men.

So the next time you hear these kinds of phrases, whether it be from a father to a daughter in a park or a teacher to a student or even on a date with a potential significant other, remember what these kinds of words can do to an individual as well as our society. As a woman who has heard them her whole life and struggled with her own self-acceptance as a direct result, I ask us all to help do the little things to make a big change.

“You’re so cool, not like other girls!”

Now tell me, what on this gorgeous green Mother Earth could possibly be wrong with being like other girls?