"Pick Me" Girl

Submission 31,366

Part of a series on Internet Slang. [View Related Entries]

About

A "Pick Me" Girl is a slang term used to describe girls who desperately try to seem like they're different or "not like other girls" in order to attract male attention. "Pick me" girls are often portrayed as females who bend over backward for men to fit in as "one of the boys" by any means necessary, including supporting traditional female gender roles like cooking and cleaning for their partners or putting down other women. The term first gained popularity on Twitter in 2016 with the hashtag "#TweetLikeAPickMe" and spread over the following years, particularly to TikTok in 2021 where people began posting skits making fun of "Pick Me" girls. The term is often used as a female version of simp and has been criticized for encouraging female-on-female hate.

Origin

The origins of the term "pick me" girl are unknown. The term first started to gain popularity in March 2016 when the hashtag "#TweetLikeaPickMe" began trending, encouraging users to tweet things that a stereotypical "pick me" girl might. The earliest tweet^[1] using the hashtag was posted on February 28th, 2016, by @_PettyCrocker, who retweeted an unknown tweet by @itsonlytwiterr saying "RT @itsonlytwiterr: Tomorrow I think we should kick off #tweetlikeapickme." Twitter^[2] user @itsonlytwiterr has a history of tweeting about "pick me" girls. The hashtag gained significant popularity throughout late February and early March of that year (examples shown below). On March 1st, the Blavity^[3] posted a collection of the tweets, claiming the term originated on Black Twitter.

Spread

On September 3rd, 2018, Redditor u/bronboop posted a meme comparing regular girls to pick me girls to /r/notliketheothergirls,^[9] gaining over 300 upvotes in three years (shown below).

On May 7th, 2020, Urban Dictionary^[4] user anyonebuttrump2020 defined "pick me girl," gaining over 3,800 likes and becoming the top definition. On December 16th, 2020, YouTuber^[10] Tara Mooknee posted a video speculating on the rise of the term "pick me" girl, looking at the history of the term online, gaining over 1.3 million views in nine months (shown below).

Around March 2021, the term started to become popular on TikTok in skits criticizing "pick me" girls. One of the earliest examples was posted on March 3rd, 2021, by TikToker^[6] @hannah.montoya, or Hannah, known for her skits making fun of different types of women. In the skit, she acts out what it's like having the "pick me" girl as a class partner (shown below). The video gained over 9.9 million views in six months.

Hannah continued to post skits about "pick me" girls throughout the month to great success. On March 6th, she posted one about "pick me" boys, gaining over 5.9 million views in six months (shown below, left). On March 8th she posted another skit about "pick me" girls, gaining over 11.1 million views in a similar span of time (shown below, right).

On March 26th, YouTuber^[11] Anna Akana posted a skit about the signs of a "pick me" girl, gaining over 431,000 views in six months (shown below).

Skits making fun of "pick me" girls increased under the hashtags "#pickme," "pickmegirl" and "#pickmegirls." On May 23rd, 2021, TikToker^[7] @ttrippiereed posted a skit about the "pick me" girl meeting the girl best friend of a group of boys, gaining over 15.6 million views in four months (shown below, left). On July 11th, TikToker^[8] @sneha.v posted a skit of the "pick me" girl over at a boy's house, gaining over 12.8 million views in two months (shown below, right).

On July 19th, 2021, Logan Mahan published a piece to Inside Hook^[5] criticizing the term for encouraging women to put each other down, particularly talking about the term's popularity on TikTok. A similar piece was published to A Little Bit Human^[12] on July 25th.