Nothing ‘Just’ About It
Is the ‘I’m just a girl’ trend fighting sexism or fuelling it?
I sit in a room with my mother and her friends, women who protested for women’s rights in the 80s. As one begins to tell an anecdote about how she recently got a flat tyre, I start to giggle about my own naivety about not knowing how to.
“Listen, I’m just a girl.”
An eerie silence took over as all eyes focused on me. A mixture of shock and disappointment filled the room.
“Why on earth would you say that?” one asked. Honestly? I had no idea.
When the “I’m just a girl” trend began on TikTok, I joined in enthusiastically. The trend started as a way for women to embrace being feminine, but some feel it's turned into a way to remove accountability for not knowing things. For those like me, who had fallen victim to internalised misogyny growing up, I felt like the trend was helping me reclaim and enjoy my femineity without shame. Together, me and all the girls of TikTok were taking back sexist narratives.
But there’s a stark difference between fighting the narrative and fuelling it.
Is the “I’m just a girl” trend fighting the sexist narrative, or further normalising internalised misogyny within the mainstream media? I stand on Wellington’s Cuba Street on a bustling Monday morning asking women what they think.
Blake Highens, 27-years-old and a recent graduate from Otago University’s med school, believes that the trend is anti-ethical to the feminist movement that generations of women before us have fought so hard for.
“You’re minimising yourself and your abilities and jokingly attributing it to gender. Yeah, it’s funny, until you realise that a large portion of the world still believes it. Prove them wrong”.
Soo Gongsun is a self-proclaimed women’s rights veteran. She’s participated in a number of feminist protests across the world such as the 2016 Poland protests of abortion ban, and the 1981 Australian Women with Feminist Disabilities Collective protest.
Gongsun says, “It sounds like this trend is allowing women to minimise themselves as people. Which is a direct effect of internalised sexism.
“It’s disheartening to see because think about how hard we have fought as women to not just be seen as just a girl. We are full humans”.
Louise Adeoye is a stay-at-home mum with two kids. She said this trend is why she’s afraid for her children to go on social media.
Adeoye doesn’t think saying “I’m just a girl” is taking back the narrative. And there is one thing she says that makes me take a step back: “Imagine saying that to a child.”
“What would they think? It’s setting back feminism by half a century”.
Women are definitely smart enough to know the difference between an ironic trend and the self-deprecation of their gender. But the patriarchy’s favourite weapon — internalised misogyny — can often taint this.
Feminist author Suzannah Weiss writes in her article 7 Ways Internalised Misogyny Creeps Into Our Lives that internalised misogyny “allows women to perpetuate the oppression imposed on them for centuries without any effort on anyone's part”. Women are made to appear the culprits in oppressing each other, with internalised misogyny taking the blame away from the patriarchy.
However, these trends also create a shared sense of camaraderie amongst women. I, for one, loved how I was able to connect with activities that I shied away from during my girlhood. I’m now proudly sport the colour pink, outwardly obsessively dissecting lyrics from Taylor Swift songs, and indulge in some good old fashioned retail therapy on a random Tuesday.
Fiona Turrell, a 31-year-old science teacher at an all-girls school, believes the trend didn’t begin as inherently sexist. She felt the trend brought a group of females together to reclaim activities that were demonised during their childhood. “I witnessed first-hand how excited my students were when the trend began.”
However, she also saw this camaraderie fading. “I also witnessed when the inevitable turn of the trend began as it morphed into something regressive.”
The trend brought a community of women together to celebrate everything we love about being female without shame. Whether that be nuclear science, getting iced lattes with the girls, playing a game of tackle rugby, or simply loving the colour pink.
However, the patriarchy’s influence has mutated the trend into the implication that women are incompetent, lack basic life skills, are unable to drive, do math, or have a desire to work.
By connecting our flaws or our failures to our gender, it implies that this is the direct result of being female.
There is a line between celebrating our identities as females within a shared community, and fuelling internalised misogyny. I wish we didn’t have to constantly be on the lookout to identify when internalised misogyny strikes again. However, in a world where the patriarchy likes to sow its seeds into all of us, we need to remain critically analysing, vigilant, and aware.
Little Woman‘s Jo March put it best when she said, “Women, they have minds, and they have souls, as well as just hearts. And they’ve got ambition, and they’ve got talent, as well as just beauty.”