Though ridiculing a woman for being a pick-me girl is a counter-productive practice and only distracts us from the real problem at hand – patriarchy pitting women against each other. But calling it out, without villainizing women, is also integral to creating change in our culture and society. Just in case you’re wondering what being a ‘pick-me girl’ means, it’s a term used to describe women who go to great lengths to receive validation from men, to appear in the best light for the male gaze and basically, cater to it as much as they can.
But can we really blame women for being a ‘pick-me’ at some stage of their life? Most women fall prey to patriarchy making women compete with one another, most of us can identify with doing the most to get the attention of men (as embarrassing as that is to admit). And I’ve been no different.
Though my pick-me-ness was more about being the perfect partner, rather than bashing other women, it was still pretty intense on the ‘pick-me’ scale. I was the kind of pick-me girl who very intentionally wanted to be the manic pixie dream girl for a man.
It was the only way I thought I could receive love. As someone who grew up feeling a lot of shame regarding my body and my appearance, I didn’t think I would ever be able to find love based on my appearance. So my defence mechanism was to learn how to become everything to a person. ‘How can I become the most magical aspect of my partner’s life?’ I would ask myself. ‘How can I be their best friend, their financial advisor, their therapist, their lover?’ I would think to myself. None of this was a conscious decision, just FYI, it wasn’t like I was strategically planning on how to become this. To be honest, it probably has to do with a quote that I read very long ago as a kid – “Be the type of person you want to meet.” I wanted to become the best kind of potential partner anyone would ever meet, this way, if my looks don’t help the situation, my personality will.
But this sort of mentality (obviously) led me into super uncomfortable circumstances. Over time it led me to becoming increasingly insecure and jealous of other women. After all, I was trying to win some made-up competition on how to be the best of the lot, wasn’t I? And for what, for a partner (who’s supposed to love you regardless of whether you’re more sparkly than the rest BTW)?
I was the kind of ‘pick-me’ who thought that being a perfect person, and being a perfect companion guaranteed the existence of love in my life. And if this meant that I had to constantly compare myself to other women, be super possessive and territorial and make other women my enemy, I did it.
But soon, I realised how futile it was to aim to be this all-rounder, 10 on 10 woman in the hopes that the man of my dreams would finally find me. Because if anything, people love you more for your humanness, and your flaws than your faultlessness, and impeccability. At the end of the day, we all want someone who’ll love us through our flaws more than our achievements and qualities. And frankly, if someone only loves you for your glamour and shine, they don’t truly love you at all.
It was even more futile to make other women the enemy, if I wanted to be a better person, it had to be for myself and myself only. Not for a man, not to be better than anyone else, but to be a better version of me. If I could go back in time, I would say sorry to all the women I talked sh*t about and judged because I felt some false sense of superiority about working on my personality for years on end. They didn’t deserve the negativity, and I didn’t deserve all the pressure I put on myself.
So now, if I see another woman doing her thing, it doesn’t take away a single thing from me. Not because I worked my *ss off to polish myself and create a better version of myself, but because even if I didn’t put in that work, we all deserve love and respect. We don’t have to work to receive the bare minimum, we don’t have to put ourselves in a boot camp to become worthy of having love and a life partner. We don’t have to be a ‘pick-me’ girl.
