"i'm not like the other girls!"
spoiler alert: you so are.
growing up i was the quintessential “i’m not like other girls” girl. i liked black. i refused to wear pink. i’ve never watched a barbie movie in my entire life. (please don’t raise the pitchforks at me.) i liked to talk about how wonderfully other my interests were, how action movies (usually the ones starring tom cruise) were soooooo much better than disney princess ones. eight-year-old me hated being made to wear frilly dresses and frocks and dainty little shoes. i proudly proclaimed how different i was from other girls my age, how they all seemed so shallow and vapid holding their elsa and anna figurines, standing in clothes of revolting shades of bubblegum pink and pristine purple, excitedly sharing loom-band bracelets or whatever their pathetic hobbies were. i was different. i was better. i ran around and played cricket and football with the boys.
fast-forward to age eleven when i got my first snatch at internet access and the world wide web lay vastly at the reach of my fingertips, my persona had developed into something even more complex. i was emo, gothic, emotional, dark, and brooding, not silly and squealing like a stupid little hamster. i had problems no one else would ever understand. other girls love and adore and revere their parents — i hated mine. i wasn’t interested in sappy love stories and romantic plotlines — romcoms repulsed me. i wasn’t at all like those ridiculous heroines. i didn’t believe in love. i wrote soulful depressing poetry and idolized sylvia plath while the girls talked about the kardashians and the met gala.
i, with my overstuffed vocabulary of purple-prose words and knowledge of the lives of depressed artists, was so much more intellectual, smarter, better than the other girls. they liked sewing and knitting and crocheting and jewelry and designing pretty clothes, living in their own little bubble of ribbons and rainbows, giggling over girl talk secrets — of course they could never have any ambitions or goals whatsoever like i had. wearing clothes of dark, drab shades wasn’t just a fashion choice — i revelled in my new identity of the goth. (i think it’s safe to say here that apart from the obsession with black, i wasn’t actually even remotely goth, never watched a goth movie, listened to a goth artist, or knew any goth figures in history. but adopting a cultural identity for the sake of the aesthetic is a topic for another time.)
shocking, i know. no wonder no one wanted to hang out with me or wanted me around. us citizens of the modern 2020s era valiantly hunt such “but i’m just DiFfErEnT!” girls down to remove them from their superiority complex and humble them back into accepting the fact that liking weird niche things doesn’t necessarily make them better than other people, and they certainly don’t have to bring down girls for liking feminine things either. and i wholeheartedly agree with it. in fact, i’m positively repulsed and cringed out by the girl i used to be, for whatever reason.
but this kind of thinking — the one that says that i am like the other girls, despite our differences — wasn’t always around. pre-covid, the internet was vastly populated with self-proclaimed “not like other girls” girls, who made liking anime, being goth, being a gamer, being a sports person their entire personality while simultaneously putting down other girls for conforming to femininity. they were found lurking in the shadows of tumblr and reddit, gaming sites and 4chan forums, pouring out their woes of being different to anyone who would listen. of course male validation had something to do with it too (male validation always has something to do with everything these days smh), with girls portraying themselves as different from other girls, proudly showing off their interests in football and beer, in order to gain approval and attention from the boys around them.
one of the few good things that’s come of the 2020s is the collective disgust of the online community at this “i’m different” superiority complex, and the dismantling of such stereotypes and wannabe identities that followed. i had my own self-revelationary transformation a few years back (though it was more about self-reflection and less to do with the hate of psuedo-goth girls online) and now i’m a completely different person from who i was back then. i love the color pink. i don’t identify myself as a goth anymore. i love shopping for clothes and get excited whenever i see a pair of particularly nice jhumkas. i love doing makeup and dressing up and hanging out with my fellow girls and talking nonstop. i love having actual friends. i’ve got no more interest in sports now than i have in a fly on the wall (probably due to my lack of vitamins and chronic underweightedness). i enjoy a good romcom story any day of the week. i still love action movies and old artists and tragic stories — but my interests have developed themselves into more stable, understandable ones, as reflections of who i am, rather than just wanting to be seen as DifFeReNt. 2018 adeen would have a screaming fit if she saw me right now.
what exactly happened here?
what being the borderline weird™ girl did to me
as a young girl i hated all feminine things. the color pink, frocks, bows, barbie, disney princesses, fairytales — and then makeup, dresses, focusing on one’s appearance, shopping, girl talk, elaborate hairstyles, going out with girlfriends — all of it. but now, i think, now, i think i hated these things not because they were feminine, but because of the stereotype associated with it.
think about it. all the stereotypical bimbo bitches and mean girls in mainstream western media have forever immortalized the color pink, feminine clothing, little trinkets, nice manners, and inherent girliness into their persona. if you revel in your femininity, then either you’re a dumb bitch who’s shallow and vapid and her entire life revolves around makeup and clothes, or you’re the popular mean girl who loves to make other people’s lives miserable. from regina george to dolores umbridge, we’ve forever associated pink with girliness with being dumb or being mean.
i think that’s how i viewed the other girls around me at the time. as either dumb or mean. (the feminist in me is cringing so hard rn i can not.) it sounds ridiculous, but it’s true.
i know what you’re probably wondering — what kind of a pyschopath kid starts compartmentalizing people into two stereotypes and refuses to engage with the other kids around them? which is exactly what i wondered too. but this is what growing up as the Ugly Girl will do to you.
because i was one. an Ugly Girl, if you will. i was different from other girls — but not in a way that could ever be superior or better. growing up i always felt ugly, not just in terms of physical appearance but also in who i was. i was never conventionally pretty as a little girl, never have been. puberty was a certified bitch to me — the awkward stages of pimply-faced, dull-skinned ugliness that lasted a year or two for others and was easier to hide lasted a good five or six years for me, maybe more. long-limbed, scrawny, flat as a pan, teeth jutting out at awkward angles, hair thick and wiry, my skin dark, my walk anything but dainty. my personality didn’t help either — i wasn’t soft-spoken, i didn’t sew or knit, i didn’t know anything about pop culture. i didn’t belong in the same world as these other girls, otherworldly beings with skin smooth as satin, smiles polished, clad in beautiful dresses i could never look as pretty in.
i couldn’t adopt the feminine symbols other girls so easily made part of their being. i was Ugly Girl, possibly even Weird Girl, who couldn’t be like the others no matter how hard she tried. the gentle patronizing of my then-friends told me enough about that. eleven-year-old me was hopeless at styling outfits, at doing makeup, at looking flawless. i remember once trying to dress up nicely and put on makeup before going to a wedding, and then scrapping it all up because i couldn’t stand how try-hard i looked, how unsuitable femininity felt on me. i couldn’t even keep up with any of the popular shows or celebrity stories or the new in looks or tiktok trends. i read books, i was the ugly nerd, helpful but not really fun to hang out with. my differences didn’t make me look glorified or amazing or better — they made me look weird, unlike the others, unwanted. when your entire friend group consists of conventionally pretty girls who shop at sephora as a hobby and have lounging admirers lined around the block, you have no choice but to suck it up and accept who you are. i was Ugly Girl, crooked and different and weird.
it doesn’t surprise me, then, that i began to hate all signs of traditional femininity. not because i thought there was something inherently wrong with them — but because i couldn’t ever look as beautiful or awe-inspiring while conforming to them like other girls did. so i began to hate it, hate them, hate all of it, because they showed me how much worse and ugly and awful i was, compared to them. i adopted my goth emo persona and limited the girls around me as shallow beings while i, feeling superior, secluded myself in my emo little bubble of self-righteousness. i glorified my otherness, convincing myself that my differences made me better than the rest of them. it was a poor sham at best for me to cope with the lack of true companionship and acceptance.
my pseudo-tumblr-goth persona became a refuge for me to hide behind. i’ve always been that sort of person who’s lost in her own world, despite all the changes i’ve gone through. so that’s exactly what i did — locked myself off in my own little dreamscape, where i was the best and everyone else — all the other beautiful, flawless girls who i could never ever be like, who would never ever want me for a friend, anyway — was either shallow and stupid or out to get me.
jeez. no wonder why i didn’t have any friends.
nah cuz what the heck was wrong with us even???
the “not like other girls” experience was different for everybody. some girls did it for male validation. some girls did it because of their own internalized misogyny and hate for other girls. some girls did it because they felt shunned by everyone else around them. some girls did it because of pseudo-feminist ideals that femininity equals weakness and we should all learn to “man up”. nevertheless, the one thing in common between all of us was the fact that we believed we were different for liking other things.
we all thought of women and girls as a collective of people who only indulged in the act of femininity that pop culture promotes to us — the excessive use of pink, feminine clothing, dressing up, putting on makeup, being obsessed with beauty products, tiktok trends and celebrities, or being soft-spoken, gentle, mild-mannered, loving babies and animals, doing girly things like sewing or knitting or loving to cook. western media drilled the idea of femininity as the above, while clearly spelling out this message to us: this is all a woman can ever be. this all you can ever be.
and when most of us grew up and explored other areas of life and discovered our interests in things that aren’t marked as particularly feminine, or are seen as masculine, we felt that we were the outliers in a community hell-bent on indulging in only one specific kind of thing. we felt that we were defying the norm and becoming different, better than the girls around us. especially for those of us who were interested in traditionally masculine things (like gaming, football, guns, even anime), we felt superior because we were OnE oF tHe BoYs, that we weren’t being shallow and vapid, we were cool and complex, because we liked the stuff that men did, which made us better than the rest of us, and that being feminine was weak and cringe and a sign of inherent inferiority.
spoiler alert! growing up, most of us who healed from such problematic thinking discovered that:
i) being interested in traditionally masculine things does NOT make us better people, and being interested in traditionally feminine things does NOT mean women are weak and inferior. owning your femininity as a part of your personality and nature is something to be proud of, not someone to be ridiculed or cringed at.
ii) even if we do not feel drawn to traditionally feminine interests ourselves, we should NOT label those interests or the women indulging in those interests and revelling in their femininity as “weak” or “stupid”. it is FINE if you like those things!! it is also fine if you’re NOT drawn to them!! just don’t shame other women for enjoying being feminine!!! let girls be girls!!!!!!!!!!!!!
iii) we all of us thought we were “different” and the “only one” out of our groups to be so. turns out each and every one of us felt different from everyone else. we thought everyone but us was shallow — but we were the shallow ones for assuming that other girls were silly and superficial. well, guess what, people aren’t one-dimensional but rather are complex human beings who are interested in multiple things at the same time. yes you can like wearing pink frilly dresses but also be really into archery and shooting. yes you can be a total goth but still like hello kitty.
it took me a long way to get here, if i’m honest. my bad experience and poor tastes in friendship led me to a major personality and mindset disaster — but i did discover girls like me, who at first glance seemed the archetype of traditional femininity but once i got over my crippling insecurities and got to know them, i discovered they were just like me. i was just like them. i was like other girls. i wanted to be like other girls. and soon enough, i stopped seeing femininity as something to recoil and cringe at, but rather as something i accepted, as part of my being.
in a way, now that i see it, a lot of my “being different” back when i was younger was my fault too. sure, i may actually have had my differences — that were seen as uncool by people — but my own one-dimensional understanding of people led me to this self-destructive path where i kept secluded in my own little corner, hating on everyone else from my self-erected high pedestal of insufferable self-righteousness, convincing myself that i was the best out of all these people, refusing to acknowledge my own insecurities and working on my own flaws.
femininity — actually, girlhood — is a collective experience. i feel like it all comes down to the people you’re surrounded with, how they make or break you. how they give you a positive outlook in life or a negative one. and for a lot of “not like other girls” girls, it took one very small, but deeply important thing to shift this mindset — actually getting to know the other girls in question and forging deep friendships. building a community. understanding other people, regardless of any outwardly differences. breaking the shackles of our own internalized misogyny and feeling comfortable in our own skin, in our own identity, as women.
i guess that’s all there is to say about it. writing this piece felt less like writing an essay and more of an incoherent brain dump, but then again, girlhood is never an easy topic to write about, at least for me. there’s so many factors to consider, so many different experiences that still don’t make sense despite many years having passed. one second you think you’ve gained clarity on a situation, the next second you realize that you’re back to knowing nothing about anything again. but i hope that whoever read this got my point. and, if you’re a fellow recovered “not like other girls” girl, i get u. i really do. i’m glad we both got out of this eventually :)
Ate once again.