A “Pick Me” Defined
So I stumbled across this fairly new cultural term (well new to me?) “pick me culture.”
Pick Me Culture:
“Women whose motivation for shaming other women is, men. Everything they do is centered around catching a man.” Sonya Eskridge
“Women who are conditioned to internalize misogyny and changes their behavior to fit the narratives of society.” “Black Women Cry”
So for example, a woman who spends all day every day posting memes and status updates that are sales pitches to men about why they should chose her. Pick me culture can also include married men/women who shame single women about what they’re doing wrong that is keeping them single.
Finally, this culture can be driven by single men who never cease from grooming potential mates. Brothas constantly shaming women about what men require and if those requirements are not met, they will never marry.
Impacts of Pick Me Culture : Women/Men
On a very high level, Pick Me Culture creates an ecosystem of people projecting their insecurities onto one another. This dysfunction stirs up a lot of depression, desperate decision making, low self-esteem/self-awareness, and high anxiety in single women.
On a more granular level women experience susceptibility to being more controlling or to being controlled by men. This impact comes from the false idea that women can tailor a persona to fit someone else’s expectations. Or in other words, make changes to control their outcomes.
Women can also fall prey to controlling men who take full advantage of their need to be whatever is required to please him.
Another negative outworking of this culture is binary thinking regarding the success/failure of relationships.
A relationship is successful if a woman does “XYZ things” and is able to “keep” a man.
A failed relationship is unsuccessful, usually because the woman did not do “XYZ things” to “keep” a man.
So the success or failure of a relationship is placed squarely on the shoulders of a woman. This is an over simplified way of viewing relationships and can perpetuate truly destructive cycles of relating. It tips the scales of servant leadership solely to the woman and removes majority of that accountability from men. Men are now prizes/consumers to women and not partners.
The last impact I want to mention (there are too many to name them all here) is justifying abuse and misogynistic behavior towards women.
“If she would’ve just did <this>, then he wouldn’t have done <that>.”
It is never a woman’s fault when a man sins. When he cheats, his eyes wander, he trades her out for a younger version, physical/mental/verbal abuse etc. It isn’t a woman’s fault.
To be clear: You are being and/or acting like a misogynist when you blame a woman for a man’s sinful behavior towards her.
Disclaimer About Sex Roles
Before I move on to the next section I have to issue a disclaimer:
- As a Christian I do believe in biblical marital roles.
- I do believe in servant leadership, for both men and women. (A woman is not a child to obey, a subordinate to, or inferior to a man)
- I do not ascribe to culturally created ideas of masculinity and femininity.
- I do not ascribe to traditional historic ideas (note: sub biblical ones) about women’s roles.
- I have no issues with a woman who wants to serve a man. The motive is key. Don’t shame other women for what they choose to do or choose to not do.
What’s Religion Got To Do With It?
Well, I’m glad you asked!
Religion has a lot to do with all this Pick Me Culture crazy. I would posit that a lot of this probably originated in various religions and spilled out into the culture.
I’m hard pressed to think of a religion or even a religious cult where these ideas don’t play some part in placing undue pressure on women.
However, today I will stick with what I know…which is Christianity.
As I mentioned briefly in my disclaimer, there is a ton of cultural baggage that gets carted into Christianity and pawned off as Gospel:
- How couples choose to run their own homes.
- Where a woman works.
- What a woman chooses to wear.
- What domestic skills a woman has prior to marriage.
- Disqualifying women (for marriage) based off of their pasts. (Anti-Christian, Anti-Gospel)
That’s just the high level list. I could really go into some detail about the things that I have been told are biblical, but no one can give me book/chapter/verse on these expectations. Pick Me’s will question a woman’s salvation over things wrapped up in the list above and have no reference verses to back up their assertions.
If a woman has the unfortunate chance to be a regular part of an active community or sub culture that tolerates “pick me” behaviors, she better assimilate to the culture or she may be blackballed.
When I was growing up in my parents household Pick Me Culture was taught, I had to assimilate.
Pick Me messages were a regular theme in my family. A woman’s worth were wrapped up in a few things: how she looked, what she could do, and marriage/children.
All the Pick Me Culture coming my way at home, flew in the face of the very liberal feministic culture that I was being indoctrinated with in public school. Suffice to say, it was very confusing for me pretty much my entire childhood.
I didn’t understand why my father would lecture me about cooking and how I needed to learn so I could be a good wife…so when I got older some man would pick me.
When my brother’s were aggressive and/or bossy it was a good character trait, but when I asserted my leadership gifts I was called militant and discouraged from being too dogmatic about my opinions or convictions, because that isn’t “lady-like.”
As I got serious about driving my own Christian walk, I decided I wanted to be married. For a long time I swore off marriage, because if it was what was modeled in my home, I wanted no parts of it.
By the time I had better examples of marriage I was aged out of “reasonable” marital age. I then turned to engaging actively in Pick Me Culture not as just a victim of it, but as perpetuator.
I thought, “Oh if I could just be the perfect biblical woman (read: Antebellum Eurocentric ideas of biblical womanhood), then someone will want to marry me.” I figured the best way for me to do it was to blog and post about how other women were failing, how they needed to change, and hope some man would see it and think better of me for my shaming behavior.
Yes, I know… completely asinine but I did it, and women do it all the time.
I’m not sure when the light bulb came on and I realized that it was exhausting to keep up that false narrative. I thank God for his amazing grace for showing me a better way.
Deterrents To Tame The Beast (pride)
Pride is the root sin that I struggled with when I participated in Pick Me Culture. It was about stroking my ego, about me thinking and saying indirectly, “well at least I am doing better than, so and so.”
It was abusive behavior and though I still may have some daft moments in my private thoughts or in private conversations, on the whole, I am defragmenting from these ideas slowly but surely.
A few things that help me is acknowledging and leaning heavily on the sovereignty of God, drowning out “pick me” voices and their lies, repenting of my pride often (a whole lot y’all), and being patient with myself.
God is sovereign over everything, and that includes my marital status. I revisit this fact often because the voices around me diminish singleness to a season of life that I can control. Prolonged singleness can be a trial, it is a gift, and is what God ordains for some, and we have no control over that fact. None.
The Pick Me’s have a vast list of lies. Singleness has been relegated to a second tier season of life, that we graduate from before we can be considered real adults. Sometimes it is helpful to just remind myself of how I adult (like a boss) every day by the grace of God. No marriage required. Debunking the lies are easy, just develop the habit of being faithful to do it as many times as necessary.
Repenting of my pride often seems so easy and straightforward, but it really isn’t. Y’all pride is sneaky than a mug (ABE to English Translation: Pride is SUPER sneaky). It shows up in quiet nontraditional ways, like offering people unsolicited advice since you are winning at life and they are a mess (single).
Being faithful about repentance ties into being patient with myself. Patience dictates that I couple repentance with Gospel reminders about how my failures don’t mean the end of the world. Perfection is no longer required because Jesus was perfect for me, suffered, died, and rose again. He did all of that with me as a person, sinful and all, in mind. The reality and the beauty of the Gospel helps me to be patient with myself, and also patient with those in my life who try to drag me for being single. Gently holding folks accountable for allowing people to bring their whole “selves” to situations, no matter what their marital status.
This topic wasn’t an easy one to tackle because it cut really close to some wounds that are still in flight, and some that aren’t quite healed. I hope that it was helpful, and for those who knew nothing about Pick Me Culture until this blog, my apologies lol #Issalot.
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