Pick Me!

I have been reminiscing about my sixth form years (ages 16-18) and a few memories made me think about how we behave with each other and why.

I feel really fortunate that in my last 2 years at school I finally made a group of friends and they are still my friends many years later. We are quite diverse in our personalities and happy to spend time in various compilations, each of us bringing something different to the mix (there were only 5 of us or we could have made the cast of friends).

Our group consisted of me; Kay a super organised, OCD type who has gone far in her career; Sam a soft, kind person who has built a strong family and raised some humans who will contribute well to society; Alex a practical, generous person who died in their prime and lastly a person who always seemed insecure and unsure of whether how she lived was good enough, we’ll call her Emma.

Emma was an only child and had two parents who loved and supported her.  We all went to the same senior school and all went on to the same sixth form college.  I started to spend more time one on one with her around age 16.  I was always closer to Sam and Alex at that age but as we reached sixth form I particularly made an effort to spend individual time with Kay and Emma.  This is where I began to struggle but didn’t identify why at the time, it seemed that everything I did Emma tried to copy or do better and I couldn’t really understand it.  The main issue was around boys, isn’t it always with both school girls and women?

Every time I would make any indication that I had a preference for anyone either as a friend or a love interest Emma would seem to try harder for their affection.  This would often happen a few weeks after we became friends, suddenly Emma would be there often physically inserting herself between us, flirting very heavily and telling the rest of our friend group she was into that person, which would invoke the unwritten rule that I should take a step back and not interfere in my friend’s “territory”.  I was very much a person who would not tread on a friend’s toes so I would distance myself from any potential love or make it very obvious I was “just friends” with someone.  After a  few weeks of limited interest from me, Emma would drop her new found person of desire. 

It took me a long time to recognise what she was doing, too long really and it’s only since I’ve embraced my feminist side that I’ve considered what has commonly been labelled as “pick me” behaviour.  There are many reasons for pick me but I would like to take a look back at a time when groups of people were nomadic around the country (I’m thinking UK here but the same principle is correct for many other land masses).

We are talking a long time ago, around 900,000 years, there is evidence of “people” living in Norfolk in England and early humans were nomadic for food, water and shelter.  Whilst they were still nomadic they lived in groups and worked together to parent offspring.  At this time when everyone worked together there weren’t monogamous life pairings, in fact it was in a woman’s best interests to have children with multiple partners as this increased the genetic pool of her offspring and a disease that might kill one child might not kill the others.  Therefore she would be more likely to raise some to independence.  This same behaviour would mean the group as a whole would work together for survival as they had shared genetic interests.

When groups started to settle in one area and then started to own their own parcels of land, men began wanting a woman to only reproduce with them.  Because men owned the land and they wanted to be sure they would pass it on to their own offspring  and not those of another man.  Gives a thought to these random incels who say that men are genetically not monogamous and women are, it is in fact the opposite, well for women anyway.  Actually it is men that have made women monogamous.  Women didn’t have an awful lot of choice because they would be denied resources if they didn’t comply, they are not as strong as men and men have made the rules, men made the “pick me” mentality and women have gone along with it out of necessity.  

From this point onwards women who got the best resourced men, got the best resources.  Over the centuries women have made themselves the most attractive in whatever way men have desired from full figures to pinched waists.  During the renaissance period the higher the forehead, the more attractive and intelligent a woman was considered to be to the point where women would shave their hairlines.  So why have we fallen in line and tried to make ourselves the most attractive (pick me) over all the other options? 

If you have all of the power and therefore ownership of the material possessions, leading you to feel that you only want to give those possessions to your genetic offspring, perhaps it is natural to want to control the method by which you obtain those offspring.  If men feel the need to make sure they know who their children are they will hold all of the resources for themselves so that a woman has to promise herself to him to get access to those resources and therefore make sure that her children have what they need to survive.  So begins thousands of years of indentured servitude, where women do not survive unless they ally themselves with a man, understandable that we develop a pick me mentality.

Why though, are we still hanging onto it? Why do we think we are “not like other women” because we don’t go to the nail salon or buy designer clothes, we understand the rules of rugby and give better head than a porn star.  We compare ourselves with other women and somehow come off more favourably, why is this the way we choose to feel value in ourselves.  Why are we still playing the male game of making us the most attractive choice to men?  Looking back at Emma’s behaviour I believe she felt some self worth by making men prefer her to me, in whichever context.  

There was certainly a time in my life where I felt I needed to be the most desired and this is where I feel the blame lies.  In being desired I had some power over the men who desired me.  In a world where women are disenfranchised, one way to claim some power is to be the most desired and to gain power through being associated with the men with the most resources.  Pick me and I might let you Pick me.

This is why #metoo was such a radical movement.  Women started to find allies in each other and not only that but they allied against the men who were abusing them.  Women have started to recognise the multitude of ways in which they are abused from the obvious violent rapes that we have recognised all of our lives but often been blamed for provoking, to the ‘stealthing’ rapes, coercive sex and petulant child behaviours of punishment when we say no to sex to name just the tip of the sexual abuse iceburg let alone financial, emotional, familial, physical etc.  

Over time women have started to claw back independence and this is frightening for those losing power or control.  If you have nothing I need then you have to make yourself attractive as an equal partner to win my alliance.  This would be great for everyone as we would find people we are compatible with and could enter a lifelong equal partnership.

Instead what seems to be happening is a global pick me via social media, from comparing celebrities or downright criticising them in any given situation; think The Princess of Wales this week criticised for editing a photograph pre release, yet don’t we all edit our photos and isn’t she denigrated for looking anything other than perfect? “See! Catherine is not so perfect, she is just like the rest of us, pick me.”  Think of all those photo crazes out there that are focussed on women; hot dog legs, sexy halloween outfits, whichever sexy pose a female celebrity does that is then the next big photo craze for women. Consider those who set themselves up as influencers by saying they are better than the other women.  Pick me I’m the traditional housewife you always wanted, see how I keep my house perfect and know exactly how to please my husband.  What she is really saying is “I am better than your long term partner at caring for you, make sure she knows it (pick me)”.  

This kind of pitting ourselves against each other only has one purpose, to come out as the best in a random group of criteria that have been set, ultimately, to make us the most appealing to men and to have men vote us as ‘best’ or most likely to be chosen by them.  This leads me to men and their part in this.  Men (I feel the need to say some men or not all men because otherwise the men reading this get angry as they feel slighted and I have been raised believing it is my job to make men feel comfortable) are fighting back, as they always have, by saying that women need to meet these ideals to be good enough to be wanted by them.  We are seeing leading countries like America peddling a number of celebrities and politicians, many of them women, telling us how we should live our lives to be acceptable to men.  Sometimes this is couched as freedom for women; to be stay at home mums or follow our traditional roles but most often it is described as our duty and the role we are best at.  Quite often this is a message delivered by women not living this role themselves for example senators or men who feel they have the right to this kind of female support and to tell women how to live, Andrew Tate.

We have spent so long pitting ourselves against each other that we have forgotten what the prize is.  No longer are we competing for the best resources, as witnessed by more and more social media posts from women stating that they care for the home, the children and work in paid employment to pay their half of the bills whilst their spouse just goes to work in paid employment.  Instead we are only competing to be the best woman, the one that is picked, pick me.

So my question is when are we as women going to stop competing with each other and instead push ourselves to be our best version, achieve what we want to and enjoy our lives doing what we choose? Not giving consideration to what the women around us are achieving except to congratulate them and celebrate their accomplishments.  Who knows, if we live to be the best we can be rather than to get the most adoration maybe equal rights will naturally be the next step as men will no longer hold the power.