For the past few months I have used the phrase “I’m just a girl” or “you’re just a girl” with my friends — probably a little too often — to jokingly excuse some action of mine or theirs. While doing so, I, like many other women and girls who have also adopted the “just a girl” trend, unknowingly became a culprit of infringing on feminism.

Popular examples of the trend demonstrate the joke’s damaging consequences. For instance, on TikTok, user @yolundahura posted a video showcasing her car stuck in her garage entrance, along with the text “I’m just a girl.” TikTok influencer @chrissychlapecka has similarly participated in the trend by posting a video reassuring viewers that “baby you’re not a failure, you’re literally just a girl.” 

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The trend has also appeared on other social media platforms, such as Instagram, with similar sentiments. It would be easy to mistakenly characterize the trend as unproblematic. On its face, it seems to represent women embracing their imperfections, like causing a car mishap, and supporting other women through failures, as @chrissychlapecka’s video appears to exemplify. 

However, beneath this seemingly accepting, supportive and positive exterior lies a darker truth: These statements could be perpetuating misogynistic ways of thinking. 

Although the statements are accepting of our failures, by connecting those failures specifically to being just a girl, they imply our flaws are directly the results of being a girl or woman. This supports notions that there are skills which girls and women are intrinsically incapable of and that we should be held to lower standards than everyone else. 

These ideas have extended even into online discussions of careers and academics. 

One user on TikTok, @houseofmaeli, made a video where a vice president of marketing asks, “What are your thoughts on that?” cutting to her as a mouse with a pink bow in her hair responding with “I’m literally just a girl.” 

Additionally, a TikTok video by user @sojaaa022 features her making the pattern of a bow on her graphic calculator with with the caption, “i dont know how to do math. im just a girl.”

Both of these examples of the “just a girl” phenomenon seemingly support that women aren’t able — and consequently shouldn’t be expected — to succeed at activities that involve utilizing intelligent thought, such as discourses on marketing or doing math, and instead should just be left to being cute with their bows. 

When critically examining such rhetoric, we must take into account internalized sexism. According to Steve Bearman, Neill Korobov and Avril Thorne’s research in the Journal of Integrated Social Sciences, internalized sexism occurs when “women enact learned sexist behaviors upon themselves and other women” and is exemplified when women devalue their capabilities. 

The implications of the “just a girl” phenomenon — that women are fundamentally incapable of certain intellectual activities — serve as instances of women devaluing their capabilities and demonstrate internalized sexism. 

Such alignments reinforce sexist notions that women aren’t smart or don’t belong in the workforce — stigmas that previous waves of feminism fought to eradicate.

This is particularly relevant to second-wave feminism, which was motivated by French feminist theorist and writer Simone de Beauvoir’s idea that “social constructs of gender lead to the view that women are inferior,” according to Human Rights Careers, and that sought to challenge such stereotypes of women’s inferiority. 

Moreover, the Gender Action Portal from the Harvard Kennedy School highlights, “Women’s belief that their value is determined by their beauty … negatively impacts women and gender equality.” 

Accordingly, by often replacing intellectual activities with activities centering around cuteness or beauty, the “just a girl” phenomenon further counteracts feminism. 

So, instead of continuing to degrade our value as women and setting back feminist progress by excusing our failures with claims that we’re just girls, we should remember the immense value of our womanhood.

As Jo March (Saoirse Ronan) said in “Little Women” (2019), “Women, they have minds, and they have souls, as well as just hearts. And they’ve got ambition, and they’ve got talent, as well as just beauty.”

To treat ourselves with due respect, we should replace the just a girl excuse with “just a human” or “person.” In doing so, we’ll be able to maintain the positive intentions of the trend of accepting our flaws as people and supporting each other, without supporting harmful and sexist stereotypes about women’s capabilities.