Madeline’s Reviews > Strong Female Character > Status Update

3/3 Hot take on “pick-me girls.” I saw reviews angry about this and, while I disagree with her that this trope is about autistic women, I can see how her experience of not understanding girl code at all could label her as a pick me. Dating her friends’ guy friends/crushes, comparing herself favorably for having more sexual experience, etc. She does come off as a pick me, for sure, albeit unintentionally.

2/3 - by horror, as I added up every feature that matched me. I had a lot of male friends! I said I wasn’t like other girls! And if I didn’t say it, I was always thinking it, but I was never saying it to show I was better than other women. All I wanted was to find out how to be like other girls and it felt increasingly impossible. The pick-me girl appears to me as just another way to dismiss female autistics.”

1/3 “When I first read about the pick-me trope at university, I nodded in agreement, a pick-me girl surrounds herself with boys to get validation, has mostly male friends, and often insists she’s not like other girls. I thought there were definitely women like that, who failed to realize that men would never stand up for them when it came to any kind of fight for gender equality. This thought was quickly followed

“For someone who was a passionate defender of the unborn, toodaloo seemed to hate children as soon as they were no longer fetuses. Still, I enjoyed being around her in a weird way, not because she provided comfort or warmth of any sort, but because her constant disquiet on issues such as morality, etiquette, life, and death made you know where you stood with her. No one else ever said what they meant.”

So good and funny. I can already tell that I’m going to like this memoir a lot!!