With “Pick me Girls,” Sophie Passmann has written a hard-hitting reckoning with the male gaze. Tracing an archetypal woman’s life, her memoir raises the question: What version of herself might Sophie Passmann have been if the patriarchy didn’t exist?
“I’m not like other women” is a typical thing a pick-me girl says. Most women have probably thought it at one time or another – not only to set themselves apart from an entire gender in an unconsciously misogynistic way, but also to belittle themselves: as in, you’re not as thin as and your skin isn’t as good as that of all other women. When you’re born a woman, self-doubt comes preinstalled. When you reach puberty at the latest, you’re confronted with the unwritten but universal golden rule: that the male gaze, being desired, is the highest currency.
With acuity and intelligence, Sophie Passmann dissects why we are all pick me girls and the impossibilities she, and probably every other woman, has to put up with in the course of her life.
