The redefinition of the “pick me girl”

Once upon a time, the phrase “pick me” was just a reference to a vulnerable 2005 monologue from Meredith Grey on Grey’s Anatomy. Online, it gained a clear, commonly used meaning around 2016, as a label for women eager to distance themselves from other women in pursuit of male validation. Over the past five years, the phrase has cemented itself in our cultural consciousness on TikTok, where “pick-me behavior” has been unpacked and parodied into oblivion. A wide range of actions rooted in internalized misogyny can be classified as pick me–like: someone highlighting how tiny and fragile they look compared with the girl half an inch taller than them, or a woman calling attention to her incredibly low-maintenance relationship style by bragging that she’s not the type to throw a fit about her boyfriend liking other girls’ photos on Instagram. According to the generally understood “pick me” code, these are women who deride other women as bothersome and dramatic for holding men accountable.

The phrase is so prevalent that explaining what it means now feels like trying to explain why the sky is blue. It just is, and pick me girls just are. But despite its widespread usage, or maybe because of it, many have lost sight of the type of person and conduct it was originally meant to define.

I saw an early reaction to Sabrina Carpenter’s latest album, Man’s Best Friend, call it “pick-me poetry” before I’d done my own first listen. That in mind, I anticipated at least one of the record’s 12 tracks would include some petty disparagement of another woman, maybe self-effacing and cheeky, in line with Sabrina’s usual style, but backward all the same. When I finally listened, I heard an inoffensive pop album. It covers how hot she finds respectful guys who do the dishes on “Tears” and the pitfalls of still being attracted to men who don’t treat you kindly on “Sugar Talking.” Man’s Best Friend egregiously fails the Bechdel Test, as many a pop album does, but its content doesn’t align with the “pick me” meaning I’m most familiar with.

People love to be weird about Sabrina Carpenter. She has become a celebrity-discourse machine this year: first the onstage “Eiffel Tower sex position” gate, then her much-discussed album cover, and now—under the banner of “Sabrina’s horniness is a personal attack on me and maybe feminism at large”—the notion that her music is too male-oriented and veers into pick-me-ism.

But here’s exactly how “pick me” has been heavily redefined. Shocking as it maybe be, any music about a heterosexual woman’s relationship experiences is bound to focus on men, particularly an album that Sabrina describes as a “party for heartbreak.” In trying to name and shame women who act as traitors, happy to throw other women under the bus to be the object of male attention, the allegation is being doled out to anyone expressing the slightest bit of romantic longing (even satirically, as Sabrina does by poking plenty of fun at her own bare-minimum standards).

The colloquial usage of “pick me” is being watered down right before our eyes! I know I’m being overly precious about policing TikTok terminology. But once we decide that merely discussing men...and a desire for their attention...makes someone a pick me, then who hasn’t been one at some point?

I’m not ready for us to lose touch with a term born out of a very specific, uniquely feminist place. By blurring what it means, we’ve arrived at a point where people online can call Charli XCX a “pick-me” for joking that she deserved to headline Coachella or call Taylor Swift one for detailing her struggles in the music industry. We’ve strayed far from the days when the women being called pick mes were the misogynistic ones.