My favorite color has been black for as long as I can remember. Black lured me in not because of how elegant or bold it could be, but because of how strikingly different it was from pink. As a kid, I insisted on wearing black nail polish — a backlash to the French, pink manicure commonly accepted at my elementary school — each time my mom took me to the salon. She often stayed by my side to make sure I wouldn’t persuade the nail artist to apply any dark colors (I did it once when I was around six).
More broadly, it has always been hard for me to connect with “girly” activities. Throughout my early teenage years, I refused to wear pink or learn how to do my makeup. I realized that what bothered me wasn’t makeup, the color pink, or skirts, rather, it was the label of these things being distinctly "feminine" that caused me to reject them all. I don’t like the implications of this label — it feels like a knife that slices the world into two and locks away a huge chunk, labeling it as "things not fit for someone like you." There’s a limit established for women: how far one can go before no longer being treated as one.
Thus, it came as a surprise for me when women all over TikTok started owning up to their femininity again with the “I’m Just a Girl" audio. The sound was taken over with girls embracing what would be labeled as feminine activities: dressing up, shopping, allowing themselves to be goofy, and displaying their feelings more openly. X, formerly known as Twitter, has not fallen behind on the trend. I run into countless tweets on my feed where girls confess giving into certain behaviors usually labeled as girly (feeling jealous, shopping compulsively, crying themselves to sleep, wanting a man to provide financial security) followed by the sentence “I’m just a girl.”
Yet, this punchline goes beyond a simple trend and into a wider scope of gendered implications that should be discussed.
I’d start by asking: Is the concept of femininity even real? I have always lashed out at the idea that this strict manner of categorizing banal things can actually exist. Is there something that can actually make someone more of a woman, or less of a man?
Simone de Beauvoir famously argued in "The Second Sex" that a woman is not born but rather made. This idea stems from her argument that femininity is a manmade construct. De Beauvoir argued that a woman’s attitude toward her own body changes as she grows up and faces society. She labels this process as “becoming the flesh,” where a woman becomes aware of her body as being exposed to another’s gaze. Said gaze can determine whether a woman feels free or oppressed within her own existence. For instance, a woman does not decide on her own that disliking kids is unladylike, rather it is society that labels childcare as feminine and other pursuits as not. As women, we don’t choose to think bad of our body but rather it is exposure to patriarchal norms that lead women to think of their bodies as subject to specific conducts they must follow to be desirable.
It is no wonder then, that women — myself included — sometimes choose to reject femininity. Nowadays, it seems like independently of the gender of the subject, society does not like femininity. If a boy happens to like baking instead of playing football, or wearing pink instead of blue, chances are that society will find that undesirable. Yet, if a girl is too masculine, she’s qualified as a pick-me, and society will probably find her undesirable too. And at the same time, if a girl loves shoes and enjoys wearing makeup, she becomes shallow and society finds her repulsive as well. Femininity feels like a cage, and the only way out of it is becoming the opposite: choosing black, instead of pink. Phenomena like alpha females or pick me girls begin to make sense.
If femininity lacks real standing, then what is the need to justify my “girly” actions by using this trend? Why do I sound shallow if I say: I love makeup, but if I do it on TikTok using the audio, then it becomes socially acceptable, funny, and clever? Is this trend actually helping women to reconnect with themselves and their femininity or is it enhancing the idea that banal things wear an absolute label and are only acceptable in certain contexts? Why do I feel the need to announce to the world that being a girl makes me want these beautiful Valentino platforms instead of my usual sneakers? Is it a way of seeking acceptance before actually buying these shoes? Does it make me less likely to be labeled as shallow?
A bigger question looms over my shoulder as I scroll through TikTok and X: Aren’t these all descriptions of simple, human behavior? What becomes of other gender identities who feel the same way about makeup or Valentino shoes as I do? It makes me think that this trend might be doing more harm than good by enhancing the idea that these things belong to women and women only.
The trend is big on expressing feelings such as sadness, anxiety, or jealousy. X is plagued with tweets that justify feeling sad or afraid of failure with femininity, while in reality any human being has every right to feel this way and with whatever intensity the moment calls for. The patriarchy causes men to experience feelings as a weakness, and I’m afraid this trend might be strengthening this idea again by putting emotions into a small box labeled “girly.” As a woman, it makes me feel like femininity is now further from me than ever, because now there is the need to justify it over and over again.
It is true, however, that many have found this trend to be empowering and all about reconnecting with femininity as something that we as women can own instead of a side effect of the male gaze. The surge of other TikTok audios such as “How I Love Being a Woman” and other social phenomena — Summer of 2023 being “for the girls” and a celebration of femininity, for instance, or, the new “girlification” of language— advocate for the idea that femininity is empowering.
Yet, the “I’m Just a Girl” audio has a justificatory connotation that may be problematic, especially for all the younger girls on TikTok. In the United States alone, one fourth of TikTok users are 10-19 years old, and more than half of the users are female. Young teens who check social media often tend to become more sensitive to social feedback, and this trend is loaded with an implicit notion of peer and male approval. This trend suggests that “being a girl” is only okay if you justify it.
Moreover, this trend has a strong satirical undertone. Quickly the trend evolved from being about reconnecting with femininity to being a dark humor joke about mental illness or toxic behaviors. On X, it’s easy to find tweets going along the lines of “I’m just a girl, of course I get jealous and angry if my boyfriend doesn’t give me attention” or “Of course I push everyone away and then blame it on them.” This satirical undertone, besides justifying behaviors that are not okay, enhances stereotypes that women are hysterical, unhinged, and overly emotional — all of which are quickly qualified as undesirable and overall enhance patriarchal norms.
All in all, though clever and fun, this social media movement might be sending out the wrong message. It turns femininity into something that needs to be justified, or otherwise is undesirable, something that can harm young girls and women.
MARIANA MARTINEZ is a College first-year studying English and classics from Bogotá, Colombia. Her email is marmari@sas.upenn.edu.
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