NLOGs (Not Like Other Girls) and the ‘Other Girl’ - internalised misogyny and the harmful effects it has on women “She was created to be the toy of man, his rattle, and it must jingle in his ears whenever, dismissing reason, he chooses to be amused.” Mary Wollstonecraft, ‘A Vindication of the Rights of Women’, 1792 To some women the worst thing you can be is ‘like other girls’. On the internet and in real life, there is a significant backlash, largely by young women, against other women who look or dress in traditionally feminine ways or primarily enjoy popular femineine media and music. This often takes the form of phrases like ‘I’m not like other girls’ and almost as soon as this phenomenon began to take hold, the backlash against it exploded. There exist entire internet groups exclusively designed to make fun of women who claim they’re ‘Not Like Other Girls’ (or NLOGs for short). Many people feel as though NLOGs are simply pitting women against one another, one Odyssey think-piece by writer Kelsey Dilling called the phrase ‘I’m not like other girls’ sexist, citing the idea that it imposes an artificial binary on women which fuels the notion that women should be shamed for choosing to look or dress in a certain way. This phenomenon is a particularly interesting one to examine largely because a lot of women have been on both sides of the NLOG trend at different points in our lives. Many girls have at some point gone through a phase of hating this archetypal idea of “other girls’’ and eschewing anything feminine, and getting over this hatred is often considered a signifier of having grown up. On the other hand, even though many of us used to be NLOGs to a certain degree, there is a clear lack of empathy towards them, and a lack of cohesive, agreed-upon reasons as to why this phenomenon is so popular in the first place. Why is this such a specific and gendered phenomenon? And are the people claiming they’re “not like other girls” deserving of widespread hatred and mockery, or do they have a point?
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