The “Girl’s Girls” Have Lost The Plot

Madison Tayt recently dealt with some online blowback after her post saying Madison Beer had “no charisma” went viral. “Full disclosure, I don’t know much about Madison Beer,” Tayt, an actor in her 20s in New York City, tells me. “She seems very beautiful. She seems talented. I’m not investing myself any further than that.” Still, Beer stans took issue with the post. Their attack of choice? Accusing Tayt of not being a girl’s girl.

“The thing that’s jarring to me is that they always come at you like ‘Wow, guess you’re just not a girl’s girl. That’s not a good look, sweetie,’ and then they turn around and are very eager to be like, ‘Well, you’re just jealous because Madison Beer is beautiful and you’re an ugly, fat whore,’” says Tayt. The girl’s girls, it seems, have lost the plot.

The “girl’s girl” isn’t new; she’s been around at least since my middle-school days — carrying a spare tampon in her purse, eager to swap fashion and beauty tips, always supporting women’s rights… and women’s wrongs. But recently, the term has been weaponized. Women who’ve been called “not a girl’s girl” in the last year and change include Ariana Grande, following her relationship with then-still-married Wicked co-star Ethan Slater (by his ex-wife, Lily Jay, specifically); Ice Spice, amid her recent drama with several other women of the industry; Rory Gilmore of Gilmore Girls; and several members of the Bravo and Love Island reality universes.

Their alleged crimes? Everything from major no-nos, like “stealing” another woman’s man, to minor offenses, like refusing to take sides in a dispute among peers or simply not being very nice. As a writer whose opinions occasionally reach mass audiences, I’ve been accused of not being a girl’s girl myself several times — in one instance, because I wrote that some women do, in fact, dress for the male gaze. Yes, “not a girl’s girl” is now a go-to insult for anything and everything — an easy substitute for “bitch” that arrived right when calling someone a “bitch” fell out of fashion. (Calling a woman a bitch is not girl’s girl behavior.) By saying someone isn’t a girl’s girl, one gets the satisfaction of isolating, excluding, and insulting another person under the safe guise of solidarity, while also signaling she herself is part of the in-group. As Maria Santa Poggi wrote for Elle in February, the term “girl’s girl” has become “eerily exclusionary, by deeming which kind of girl is allowed access to the sisterhood, depending on what kind of girl she happens to be.”

Even on Housewives, a franchise built on interpersonal nastiness, feuds, and drama among women who flaunt migraine-inducing wealth, “not a girl’s girl” has become common code. As Nicola Fumo, a professional writer and an amateur scholar of Real Housewives, tells me, “It used to be that ‘bullying’ was the word they used … but now it’s changed to ‘she’s not really a girl’s girl,’” says Fumo.

We’ve seen this all before: The term “pick me,” for example, used to describe women who belittle other women for the sake of attracting men; now, any woman who expresses a dissenting opinion can be labeled a “pick me.” What was once a useful term for a specific type of behavior has been twisted into a catch-all insult. Because these terms seemingly refer to a woman who isn’t nice to other women, they’re fair game to be thrown around in ways that other insults historically lobbed against us aren’t — especially by men. Part of their appeal, in fact, is that you’re unlikely to ever hear a man call someone a “pick me” or “not a girl’s girl” at all.

This has all coincided, though not coincidentally, with an emphasis on girlhood in online and pop culture. Girl math! Girl dinner! Clean girl aesthetic! At the peak of it all, the girl’s girl! In the year of the girl, girl partisanship became mandatory, and now the alternative is tantamount to treason.

In the year of the girl, girl partisanship became mandatory, and now the alternative is tantamount to treason.

Many of my friends told me they’d be devastated if they were deemed “not a girl’s girl.” “I’d cry!” one said. Elsewhere online, there are tons of posts from women saying they find it to be the ultimate insult, going so far as to say they’d need to be institutionalized, Girl, Interrupted-style, to cope.

Unlike merely being called selfish or mean, something many of us would cop to at times, hearing we’re “not a girl’s girl” can feel like an affront to our entire worldview — akin to being a bad feminist, or not a feminist at all. As of 2020, 61% of women in the United States identify as feminists, a number that climbed to 68% for women ages 18 to 29, 72% for women with at least a bachelor’s degree, and 75% for women who lean Democrat. Over the last four years, with the overturning of Roe v. Wade and the rise of TikTok feminism, I’d wager those figures have risen even higher.

But shouldn’t feminists be allowed to criticize women? Is that not, in fact, an important element of feminism?

“I think it’s really important that feminist solidarity is formed around an issue — around a sense of being marginalized, around us being discriminated against, sexual violence, domestic violence, labor issues, reproductive issues,” says Dr. Sarah Banet-Weiser, dean of the Annenberg School for Communications at the University of Pennsylvania and author of Empowered: Popular Feminism and Popular Misogyny. “It’s not about being a girl. It’s not about being a woman.”

According to Banet-Weiser, the “girl’s girl” mentality is an example of what she calls popular feminism. “The politics of popular feminism are individual politics. ‘Be confident. You’re beautiful, you are worth it’ — all those are great for us to feel about ourselves, and they’re important. But they’re not addressing the sort of structural issues that make us feel unconfident to begin with.”

While “women supporting women” is well and good, not everything we do as women is inherently feminist. (And it shouldn’t have to be!) Acknowledging that difference — and being able to criticize actions that are actively harmful toward women — is a crucial part of the feminist project. But the girl’s girl, it’s been made clear, is supposed to be a cheerleader for women regardless of the implications or consequences. Tayt has noticed that women are often accused of “not being girls’ girls” on social media when they discourage others from engaging in fast fashion or compulsive buying — either by not constantly linking out to products or, heaven forbid, “gatekeeping” the source. We seek only to be affirmed in our actions, regardless of the consequences.

“Girls will get online and be like ‘I need to know every single detail and every single product you buy. And if you don’t give me that so I can go out and buy, buy, buy, then you’re not a girl’s girl,’” says Tayt.

These supposedly pro-women terms serve as a free pass to excuse our worst (or even just most stereotypically not-great behavior), be it mean-spirited gossiping or excessive shopping. Rather than creating the capacity to understand how these behaviors might be holding us back, girl’s-girl feminism insulates women to be beyond reproach — unless, of course, they think critically about other women.

“If the [girl’s girl] is suggesting that a woman ought to uncritically support every choice another woman makes — well, that is a very regressive “you-go-girl” sort of feminism that I sincerely believe we’re all past,” says Melissa Petro, author of Shame On You: How to Be a Woman in the Age of Mortification. She adds, “If you’re identifying as a ‘girl’s girl’ as a way of avoiding another undesirable identity — like ‘pick-me girl’ or any of the other countless misogynistic insults aimed solely at women — then you’re missing the mark. And yes, there’s a long history of terms like this — reductive labels that pit women against women.”

We’re still being petty and ganging up on each other, just wrapped in new language.

Tayt agrees. “The thing that always stands out to me nowadays [is how] whenever girls are like, ‘I’m a girl’s girl,’ and that is the end all be all of their feminism, they are so eager to turn around and call any other woman fat or ugly without even like a single glint in their eye about whether that’s actually feminist action,” she says.

Over the last decade, we’ve all been fed a heavy diet of anti-bullying campaigns and Mean Girls and Taylor Swift-style female empowerment, making outwardly picking on other women uncool, at least in theory. We’re all calling ourselves feminists, even if we don’t quite know what that means. And though, we can all agree, it’s far superior than the alternative, it can be at times quite superficial. We’re still being petty and ganging up on each other, just wrapped in new language.

Speaking from personal experience, it stings to be told I’m not a girl’s girl. Look, I love women! I took Feminist Philosophy in college! I primarily read women authors! I add women I don’t even really know to my Instagram Close Friends list! I’ve never been the one who talks about preferring to hang out with men because they’re “less drama” than women, or otherwise positioned myself as “not like the other girls.” But it’s for these same reasons — and the fact that no one I actually know in real life has ever accused me of it — that I know not to take the insult of “not a girl’s girl” too seriously. Also: Why not just call me a bitch?