“I’m not like other girls,” confidently says the girl in the corner of the party, playing on her smart phone, wearing vintage glasses and a graphic tee. “Most girls are dumb. Most girls are backstabbing, wanna-be Kardashians obsessed with nothing other than themselves.” She removes her glasses, sliding them on top of her head, stepping closer to the boy she’s talking to. “I like to read. I hate drama. I care about the world. I only listen to The Beatles. I'm vegan. I just don’t get along with other girls; I’m not like them.”
Congratulations! If you’ve ever said anything similar to the above paragraph, you have, at some point, put down and generalized an entire gender – your own gender, at that. This tired trope that intelligent, thoughtful, and “complicated” women are unicorns that fiercely stray away from the “normal” behavior of Other Girls is everywhere. This is, without a doubt, bullshit. Obviously, there are countless problems with the concept of Other Girls, so let’s start at the core and work our way toward the periphery, secondary issues.
Other Girls do not exist. Say it louder for the people in the back. Other Girls do not exist. There is not one type of girl. There is not one type of person. You simply cannot put an entire half of the population into a single category, entitled “Other Girls,” that you and only you are not a part of. Women – people - are intricate beings each with their own hobbies, interests, goals, likes and dislikes. The Other Girl, or the average girl, is impossible to define. Yet somehow, we as a society have decided that all girls are the same (except for you, girl sitting on top of the picnic table playing guitar and smoking a cigarette, except for you).
By making the statement that you are “not like other girls,” you are embracing the idea that all women are the same, that all women are shallow, ditsy, and vain. You think that, because you have complex thoughts, are caring, like video games, hate pop music, or aren’t interested in makeup, you are exceptional – you should be a role model for Other Girls everywhere. But when did being the average girl become a bad thing? Why is it that so many girls strive so hard to deviate as far away as possible from the Other Girl stereotype?
The narrative of the über popular, nasty, uninteresting high school girl has further made femininity synonymous with those negative traits. Historically, being female has been associated with weakness and incompetence, and by saying “I’m not like other girls,” you’re just making the argument easier. By saying “I’m not like other girls,” you are digging deeper into the catty mold girls have been put into. There is nothing inherently wrong with femininity, with having girl friends, or with enjoying popular culture. There is something inherently wrong, however, with condemning the entire female population.
If you believe you are not like Other Girls, you consider yourself worth more than the rest of your gender, then you believe that women are worth-less. If you think finding interest in indie music, Pokémon, or whatever the hell gets you going makes you better than Other Girls, you are really saying women are boring and uninteresting. Maybe if you didn’t exclude your female colleagues and classmates by acting as if you are light years ahead them in every aspect, you’d realize that every girl is different, has had unique experiences, and girls are actually pretty damn fun.
So the next time you try to impress a guy by saying you’re not like Other Girls, remind yourself that Other Girls don’t exist. And even if they did, what’s so wrong with being one?
