Nadiyah Zulfah, Yazid Basthomi
Social media has recently attracted the attention of researchers from various disciplinary backgrounds, including those in linguistics. Social media has triggered the burgeoning of a huge number of neologisms. For example, the development of the “pick-me girl” trend on TikTok has created a new identity for women. The term pick-me girl has become a topic of discussion on social media and has been widely discussed through posts. The term pick-me girl has been widely employed to label a particular woman exhibiting certain characteristics. There have been some variations of the definition of the term pick-me girl on the internet, which may lead to some confusion as regards the usage. Previous research has interpreted pick-me girl based on specific case studies that fall short of comprehensively describing the term pick-me girl. This lack of description has led to stereotyping of women on the platform in relation to cyberbullying and body shaming. This study discusses the pick me girl identity and the mislabeling of women by analyzing the language used using Fairclough’s three-dimensional analysis. Through critical discourse analysis of the language employed by pick-me girl characters, this study has revealed that the level of femininity exhibited by the pick-me girl depends on the targeted potential partner. This degree of femininity can be classified into two primary categories: the pick-me girl who seeks to align herself with men by adopting a more boyish style and the pick-me girl who relies on male protection while showcasing a more feminine style. Pick-me girls engage in internalized misogyny by engaging in self-presentation, self-objectification, and demeaning other women in order to gain approval from potential partners. These behaviors are displayed differently depending on the character of the potential partner targeted by the pick-me girl. Copyright (c) 2025 The Authors. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/.
Universitas Negeri Malang, Indonesia
