Opinion: The Problem with “I’m Just a Girl”
- Daisy Woelfling
- Dec 1, 2024
- 8 min read
Updated: Oct 8
What the “I’m just a girl” trend, trad wives and “girl’s girls” mean for fourth-wave feminism.
No Doubt frontwoman Gwen Stefani was the first to publicly utter the phrase in the seminal hit “Just a Girl” off the band’s third studio album, Tragic Kingdom (1995).
“I’m just a girl in the world…” she drawls coquettishly, “...that’s all that you’ll let me be.” In interviews, Stefani explained that the song was written out of frustration towards the societal limitations placed on women and girls. The lyrics—which touch on persistent issues like the oversexualization of women and restrictions on women’s rights—resonate to this day, making it a feminist anthem.
The song’s iconic bridge became exposed to a new generation of women when a remixed byte blew up as a popular TikTok sound during the summer of 2023. Soon after, the audio of Julia Roberts in the 1999 rom-com Notting Hill professing, “And don’t forget, I’m just a girl standing in front of a boy asking him to love her,” also went viral on the app.
Videos posted using either sound often highlight shared experiences of girlhood (in other words, the modern-day equivalent of the “Just Girly Things” memes on Tumblr in the early 2010s). Topics covered in these videos range from having excessive beauty products to the inability to parallel park. However, this new format lacks the original rah-rah energy of No Doubt’s 1995 hit.
“In some ways, the ‘I'm just a girl’ trend is celebrating femininity: liking pretty pink things, bejeweled objects and things that smell nice,” says Alison Harvey, an associate professor of Communications at York University specializing in feminist media.
“These movements are a real reaction to the 90s and the 2000s, which often characterized girls and femininity as less than or weaker. They are about re-embracing femininity, not as a negative, but as something that [women] want to experience,” explains Angie Fazekas, an assistant professor at the Women and Gender Studies Institute at the University of Toronto.
Vulnerability is another through-line in the “I’m just a girl” trend. In these videos, female creators are owning their shortcomings. The trend has infiltrated real life too. I have heard countless female friends proclaim, “but I’m just a girl” after making a mistake or when reflecting on a regrettable decision. Firsthand, I have seen the trend’s ability to connect women—use of the phrase usually gets a few laughs or a “that’s so real.”
Despite the trend’s unifying potential, the messaging in these videos has taken a weird and regressive turn.
A post shared by Instagram user @glamtogether reads, “Some days I wanna be a strong, independent single aunt. Other times I wanna be a billionaire’s wife. That’s okay, I’m just a girl.” Another post shared by TikTok user @phoebeprenticee states, “Me when I start crying for no reason #imjustagirl.”
“All I think about is fashion, makeup, hair, nails, and money,” claims TikTok user @chanelkarlskovtayeh in a video posted with #imjustagirl in the caption.
Cracks at girls overpacking for a trip or spending too much on iced coffee are one thing. Painting women as superficial, overly emotional and incapable of taking care of themselves is another. This rhetoric reinforces dangerous stereotypes that previous waves of feminism fought hard to dispel.
“The problem lies in saying ‘I don't know how to park a car’ and ‘I don't know how to do things,’” clarifies Harvey.
“There's a significant subsect of people who are using [the trend] in a way that's ironic and humorous to call out the sentiment that girls can do less,” explains Fazekas. “At the same time, there are people who sometimes miss some of the irony and complexity. In that capacity, it can really reinforce sexist beliefs.”
I think many of us have moments where the stress of life and the crazy world we live in makes us want to crumble. We’ve all longed for someone to swoop in and take care of something difficult so we don’t have to. I would argue that this is simply part of the human experience rather than a female one. The issue with promoting these sentiments through the “I’m just a girl” trend is that they feed into misconceptions that women are weak and inferior to men.
In recent years, we have witnessed certain female content creators advocate for a return to "traditional values" and gender roles with the rise of the “trad wife” movement. Model and influencer, Nara Smith has become revered online for making videos on how to make gum from scratch while wearing 1950s-style dresses and talking in a hushed, feminine tone. Other creators promote finding fulfillment through completing housework, raising children and in extreme cases even submitting to their husbands. In a dystopian TikTok, @mrsarialewis offers five tips on how to submit to your husband including, “Don’t criticize or nag him” and “value his input and yield to his desires.”
“[Under] capitalism we're working ourselves to the bone, so there's something appealing about a sanitized, attractive version of domestic life,” claims Harvey. “What's dangerous is these women are in some ways actively talking about giving up their own right to make decisions and saying, ‘I'm incapable.’”
Fourth-wave feminism (the wave we are currently in) is considered to have begun in the early 2010s with the growing presence of the internet and social media-based activism. This period in feminism thus far has been defined by greater fluidity and intersectionality. “We see a greater connection between feminism and other fights for justice, rather than privileging gender as the only site of conflict,” unpacks May Friedman, a professor at Toronto Metropolitan University’s School of Social Work and member of the National Women's Studies Association.
“Intersectionality is the idea that we all have intersecting identities that we can't just look at [singularly] to understand people's experience in the world,” explains Fazekas. “Black women have a very different experience of both Blackness and womanhood than Black men and white women do.”
“We're in spaces where there’s not a straightforward definition even of what feminism is [anymore],” says Harvey. Definitions of what constitutes a woman are also becoming increasingly blurry as of late, with many opting to reject traditional gender labels.
The result is a much less universal feminist platform. Previous waves were united by common goals: suffrage, equal pay, reproductive rights—the “issues.” Fourth-wave feminists take a more individual approach: women should be free to make their own decisions and pursue what makes them happy, even if considered “regressive.”
“On the one hand, these trends co-opt the language of ‘choice,’ suggesting that there are lots of ways to be a strong, confident woman,” remarks Friedman. “An individual woman being treated like a precious, fragile thing may fit her own life. But the desire to affiliate oneself with docility, fragility and other stereotypically feminine traits is a choice with specific consequences in the moment we’re in,” she adds.
We are already beginning to witness these consequences unfold. Clips of trad wives are being circulated by Andrew Tate-type podcast bros to bolster their sexist hot takes. Creator @theonlyfayez shouts, “What does that even mean, ‘I’m just a girl?’ It’s like no female wants to do anything anymore,” in a heated TikTok rant. “Once I hear a girl say, ‘well I’m just a girl,’ I know that you’re broke and lazy,” claims TikTok user @lil.goodie.
Amidst all of this commotion, another internet-based trend offers a glimmer of hope for a united feminist collective: the “girl’s girl.”
What exactly are the requirements to be a girl’s girl? Creators behind the trend have clarified that it simply calls for looking out for other women, regardless of your personal feelings towards them.
“Sometimes supporting women goes beyond personal preferences. Being a girl’s girl is more about promoting a positive and uplifting environment for women,” explains TikTok user @ann_natalie. “It involves actively combatting societal norms that pit women against each other and instead fostering a culture that is all about support and empowerment,” she adds.
Being a girl’s girl is seen as something to take pride in. Blake Lively described being called a “crown straightener” (an adjacent term to girl’s girl) as the “best compliment I’ve ever been given” in an interview. Likewise, the opposite has been used as an insult.
Popular TikToker Becca Moore explains, “The opposite of being a girl’s girl is being a pick-me.” Moore is referencing another term that originated online that refers to a girl who puts down other girls for attention and male validation.
Several female creators have made videos on “signs she is not a girl’s girl,” that include offenses such as, “if she acts different in front of guys” or “if a girl compliments your outfit and you don’t immediately tell her where it’s from.” These alleged faux pas have spiraled out of control: women are now needlessly attacking other women, in direct contradiction with the movement’s original message.
“Hierarchizing appropriate female behaviour with[in] the framework of being pro-woman is anti-feminist, transphobic and hypocritical,” claims Friedman. “The language of girl’s girl is just another way to police women and isn’t a terribly effective tool for liberation.”
“Cancel culture has been a significant issue in digital and progressive activist spaces. There’s this expectation that everybody needs to be 100% perfect all the time. If you're not then you get called out or told you're doing things incorrectly, or ‘not being a girl's girl,’” explains Fazekas.
Even trends that appear to encourage unity and “sisterhood” are resulting in division, in-fighting and exclusion. The decentralized and divided platform of fourth-wave feminism seems to follow the general trajectory of rising hyperindividualism and social fragmentation in the Digital Age.
“In some ways [these trends] are all just trying to find out what it means to be a woman in a world where femininity is still somewhat negatively framed and rules are not really strict anymore,” says Harvey.
What the “I’m just a girl” trend, trad wives and girl’s girls all underscore is that we must be intentional about the ideologies that we promote in real life and online. “There are as many ways to be a feminist as there are to be a human,” Friedman emphasizes. Yet, we must also think critically about the implications of the language we co-opt.
The message of women being incapable spread by “I'm just a girl” is particularly startling in a post-Roe v. Wade world, where in some cases women in the United States are not being trusted to make their own reproductive decisions. What on the surface may seem like an innocent comment, a playful counter to “boys will be boys” to even the playing field, can actually be very damaging.
“With pretty much every Internet trend, there are people who take it and then weaponize it. With the amount of people that are on social media and part of these movements, you're never going to get everybody acting in good faith and with the same level of knowledge,” notes Fazekas. They recommend being critical of cancel culture and educating users on feminist history to prevent unnecessary division and the narratives of these movements from being twisted.
“We're definitely seeing a backlash against feminism right now. But I don't think that this is the first time that's happened, or the only time it's happened in feminist history,” reassures Fazekas.
Will we ever have a unified feminist front in the 2020s? It’s hard to say. But the least we can do is not undermine the efforts of those who surfed the rocky waters of first and second-wave feminism by throwing around silly internet jargon.
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