Day 243 of 365: Girls, It's Time To Stop Saying You're "Not Like Other Girls"

And since I'm all about the opinions these day:


Lady, women, young female adults: it's time to stop saying you're "not like other girls".


It's tempting, I know. Look at the stereotype we are presented with: this hysterical, irrational, pink-loving shopaholic who gossips about her friends and gets super jealous and nitpicks every move of her boyfriends and doesn't get that whole "sport" thing (lol!). Unless you're fulfilling that very stereotype, you'd want as far away from it as possible.


I've been there. Trust me, I've been there. I took pride when I was younger about "not like being other girls". I ran track and loved college & professional hockey and preferred climbing trees & disappearing into nature over retail therapy. I rarely wore pink and I could hold my own in a chat about mixed martial arts. I hated romantic comedies and cheered when things blew up in movies. I never got jealous if I were in a room with a woman who was prettier or skinnier than me. My circle of friends was equally populated by both boys and girls. Man, how not like other girls was I!


But let's be 100% clear, here: there were few things as self-involved as me proclaiming I wasn't like other girls. Self-involved, incorrect, and downright harmful to the female gender as a whole.


It's downright instinctual to want to elevate our status as the expense of others. But what are we saying when we say, "I'm not like other girls."? We're confirming that nasty stereotype: that personality trait that is true for maybe 5% of the population, we confirm as 95%. We indirectly state that most women are undesirable messes, and thank God we're not one of them.


But that can't be further from the truth. The same way women make up 40% of the sports fandom world, the same way women come in all shapes and sizes and reactions. It's time we own this "girl"ness, recognizing fully that it can fall anywhere on the spectrum. That there's nothing wrong with loving pink, or with loving anything but the color pink. That we're so much more than our stereotypes.


To be frank, it's about time we got over ourselves. Because, statistically speaking, we are like other girls. And we're like no one else at the same time, too.