Why I Hate The Phrase ‘I’m Just a Girl’

By Marissa Rotolo

sipahilerdenim / @cerenenim via Pinterest

What can I say? I’m just a girl!

By 3 p.m., I softened probably twenty emails by starting off with "Just checking in!" or "Sorry to bother you!", discovered I'd bled through a white skirt, laughed so hard with my friend in a bathroom that I forgot to be embarrassed, and cried in my car on the drive home. Four completely different versions of myself before dinner. I survived each one without announcing, "What can I say? I'm just a girl." Not because I wasn't one, but because being a girl had never felt like an excuse. It felt like the reason I could hold all of those contradictions at once.

Gwen Stefani's Just a Girl became the soundtrack to viral TikTok videos of women shrugging off everything from impulse purchases to genuine frustration with, "What can I say? I'm just a girl?" I get it. Sometimes it's easier to blame the stereotype than spend another ounce of energy fighting it. The phrase is familiar because it's the light we've been painted in for decades.

The funny thing is, Gwen Stefani wasn't calling herself "just a girl." She was rolling her eyes at everyone else who did. The verses aren't cute. They're frustrated. They're claustrophobic. She's told where she can go, what she can wear, and what she's capable of. The title is sarcastic. The word that matters isn't girl. It's just.

That's the word that changes everything. Girl is an identity. Just is a qualifier. It shrinks whatever comes after it.

We don't say we're just ambitious, just emotional, or just funny. But somehow, women have become comfortable introducing ourselves with a word that makes us smaller before anyone else has the chance. And I get it because I've lived it; it's a universal feminine experience.

I know the trend is ironic, sometimes even camp. Most of the women participating don't actually believe they're incapable. If anything, it feels like getting there first. If I make myself smaller before anyone else can, maybe it won't hurt as much when someone else tries. Like softening some blows or disarming a grenade, one that's existed forever.

If anything, being a girl has required me to become remarkably good at carrying contradictions. I can apologize too much and still know what I'm talking about. I can cry in my car and still show up to dinner. I can bleed through a white skirt and still finish the workday. None of that has ever made me just anything. My experiences have led to complex emotions and complex realizations.

Cover Photo: kate vandoren / @k8eekat2 via Pinterest