The Pick Me 🙋🏽‍♀️🙋🏾‍♀️🙋🏻‍♀️ Episode

MASKulinity Podcast

This week, we’re joined by multihyphenate artist Stephanie Graham to delve into Pick Me culture. Remoy has no idea what that means, so Samantha walks him through what Pick Me culture is, the nuances in the ways women interact with each other when talking about relationships with men, and what that means for MASKulinity.

• Have you ever done anything out of character to be picked or chosen? This question is at the crux of this episode, and Remoy shares his own personal experience, which mostly includes success without shame.
  • Along the way, Samantha breaks down what a simp is, which according to Urban Dictionary, is the male version of being a Pick Me.
  • The crew walks through how each term started out as a way to call folks out for bending their self-respect for desired love interests who don’t care for them but evolved into insults toward people doing anything nice or pleasing to the object of their affection.
  • Samantha traces back the origins of “woman who’s not like other women” to the “cool girl,” a compliment given to women who never required too much from their man and just went with the flow, drank beer, watched sports, while being hot and keeping a size 2.
    • Remoy gives all the reasons why his partner is a cool girl, and they’re just because she’s a cool person who does cool stuff. But the “cool girl” is a trope of a woman suppressing parts of herself so that she can appeal to a man by not taking up too much space.
    • Remoy gives a great example from popular culture.
  • Samantha shared her own “cool girl” attempt as a 12-year-old girl trying to impress a boy.
    • Stephanie vulnerably shares seeking sneaker-swag validation from men, albeit platonically.
    • Is Samantha’s story an example of Pick Me behavior - What do you think?
  • At the crux of the Pick Me is her superiority to other women for her ability to be appealing to men, whereas the cool girl suppresses her needs and aligns her interests with her man for appeal. They overlap.
    • Samantha provides examples and Remoy picks up on the suggested requirement to be demure to be a real woman, and Stephanie picks up on the chastisement of women who aren’t putting domesticity at the top of their priority list.
• They get into Stephanie’s work exploring gender through art.
  • Stephanie shares her experience photographing men for her Love You Bro series, celebrating friendships between Black men. The responses to her project had her questioning whether she was a Pick Me.
  • Remoy makes an important point about how patriarchy drives up these insecurities and conflicts among women.
• Samantha points out the rewards that women get when participating in Pick Me/Cool Girl culture.
  • Men enjoy being appealed to, and men’s interests being viewed as superior to women’s automatically legitimizes Cool Girls.
• It gets complicated. Folks calling out Pick Me behavior may just be performing a different type of sexism. Calling out women for their behavior and what they prefer is sometimes also folded into the Pick Me trope, when it’s really sexism.
  • Samantha calls out that the onus of dismantling patriarchy falls on men. Remoy and Stephanie cosign.
  • Remoy makes an important statement about how men can step in and stand for what’s right.
  • Stephanie shares small ways that men can intervene using their values rather than telling women what to do.

In our Five Questions segment, Stephanie shares what Pick Me culture can look like in her art and in real life.

• Stephanie illustrates the ways that Pick Me culture is rewarded in our culture.
  • Girls get the prize: the guy.
  • Women compete and win the prize, but it can backfire when they want to put their own needs first later in the relationship.
  • They get into the trad wife trend. Is this another example of Pick Me culture. Sort of. The trad wife trend has been blazing online but it’s a performance of gender. Women peddling the trad wife are businesswomen selling a lifestyle that they’re not actually living for profit.
• Stephanie lets us in on her project #NEWGLOBALMATRIARCHY. The performance and installation project explores friendships between women through the lens of goddesses.
  • Why is there a supposed hierarchy between women in their friendships? There isn’t and this project explores that. It contradicts the trope of Pick Me culture pitting women against each other for an ultimate prize.
• Stephanie’s photography project Love You Bro explores male friendships. The closeness between men is seldom expressed, instead painting a picture of men as inherently violent.
  • She gets into the discomfort folks have seeing men being affectionate with one another.
  • Samantha wonders what the reception was from both the participants and the audience.
    • Stephanie shares the concerns men had doing the project, and the eventual glee and satisfaction of the participants.
• The hot seat is flipped this week! Remoy answers Stephanie’s question to the host. What was the turning point for Remoy that got him to question patriarchy?
  • Remoy shares his upbringing seeing women’s leadership.
  • He witnessed abuse growing up, which led to insensitivity toward women on his part.
  • Remoy’s turning point shows that it’s possible for men to transform and be more thoughtful about patriarchy and its harms.

Referenced on this episode:

• Gone Girl: book monologue and movie monologue
• Examples of Pick Me culture
• Love You Bro
• #NEWGLOBALMATRIARCHY

COMPANION PIECES:

• The Marriage Episode 👰🏿‍♀️💒💍, with Dr. LaToya Council
• The Matriarchy Episode, with Izzy Chan
• Radicalization and TSwift, with Jeff Perera and Jonathon Reed