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There seems to be some confusion (from liberals and conservatives alike) about what girls are and aren’t. I’m not a feminist, but there is one thing that I think is actually sexist. It’s one issue I do have some sympathy for, and it’s that:

The way girls are portrayed in media is extremely alienating and tedious and looking at our culture, I think it did cause a lot of problems.

I’m bringing this up because it (1. Is bad writing (2. legitimately causes some problems in our culture. I mean that sometimes people believe the superficial stereotypes are girly instead of actual girly things and I’m sick of it. I want to explain what girls are actually like (and not like).

(Obviously “not all girls are like this, some of them do like pink, blah blah blah,” okay shut up).

Girls don’t always have to be tough unbeatable action heroes. I’m also not going to say “those kinds of characters are trying to erase truly feminine characters like the old ones” because the old ones are just as bad. Yes, “wearing makeup and shopping and dating isn’t wrong” but I disagree that they’re more inherently feminine and that all/most girls like those things to an extreme.

I’m not saying this to say that I’m personally “not like other girls.” I don’t think the MAJORITY of girls are like the stereotypical “other girls” at all.

Rather than makeup, shopping, pink, and romance, why aren’t girls associated with things they actually do more often? It’s also annoying when the real obviously girly things are attributed to boys (by calling the girls who prefer them “tomboys” “not like other girls” or “a funny one like that Belle” or whatever).

For one thing, the color I hear girls say they like most often is blue, not pink. If you look up online polls about “girly or tomboy” girls usually get “tomboy” (aka normal) the vast majority of the time. They often like making up original characters and reading books like Harry Potter and being edgy and being rebels and being sarcastic. Many are artistic or creative.

They have a soft spot for “dark” things like True Crime and often go through goth or emo stages. The color they wear most is probably black. They’re not buzzkills or obsessed with being more “mature” than the boys as often as they are in stories. (In fact, the word “mature” brings shivers down my spine).

If you can’t tell if somebody online is a girl or boy, they’re probably a girl if they’re talking about social issues, especially in a “slay queen” voice.

If you can examine their profile they’re more likely to have original characters (of a certain brand), filled out bios or question tags about themselves (they love talking about their identity even if they’re not self aware at all).

If they draw cartoon humans, this is when you can really find a lot of giveaways when it comes to someone’s biological sex. Yes, it corresponds to biology no matter what they identify as, in my experience. (Part of why I say they’re not self aware).

I could probably write a book about how to identify someone’s sex by their art style, but here are just a few interesting things:

Girls draw boys more often and boys draw girls more often.

After over a decade on DeviantArt, I can often make a pretty good guess if someone is a boy or girl based on what/how they draw. Especially when they draw cartoon humans. They both tend to draw types of characters they think are attractive or (to them) exotic. To teenagers and young adults this is usually the opposite gender. But their approaches are both a little bit sheltered and not quite how the actual gender they’re drawing would draw their own gender. Example:

Boys tend to draw girls wearing pink, skirts, dresses, puffy gowns, high heels, cheesy bright lipstick, bows and prominent eyelashes more often than girls would draw these things on themselves. Girls draw themselves with a variety of casual clothes, rarely pink, and are likely to say they “hate dresses/skirts.” More often, they draw themselves wearing something like a t-shirt, jeans and sneakers and if they have makeup it’s not garish fat pink or red lips and tacked on eyelashes. (There are almost no cartoons on TV that don’t make the girl have at least one of these stereotypical attributes if you really pay attention, which is just as lame as if every boy had to have a mustache or wear a blue suit).

Then there’s the anatomy. Girls usually stylize themselves in more creative, extreme ways, not caring if they deemphasize (or don’t draw at all) particular feminine attributes. Boys almost never forgo these attributes. The anatomy is always there, and exaggerated if anything. They tend to be more solid somehow as well. Girls often draw characters more noodley and can be a little more floaty and less tethered to the principle of “solid drawing.” (Compare Hazbin Hotel characters to something more Mario-esque). While both genders might make cartoons “cute” girls tend to do this in a more trendy “kawaii” or derpy style.

Cartoons can be appealing in a variety of ways, even if they’re not “pretty.” Girls often make themselves appealing in ways such as funny, cool, derpy, or edgy. Boys usually go for pretty. Girls rarely do.

On DeviantArt, a boy’s gallery is much more likely to have stereotypical girl characters like Lori Loud, Princess Peach, Starfire, or others that girls tend not to prefer (or are more annoyed by). Girls are way more likely to prefer the “tomboy” (aka normal girl), edgy or rebellious characters like Raven, Daisy, or ANY of the Loud sisters besides Lori or Leni. (Though in reality, the characters they draw most of all are boys, more on that later).

The way girls portray boys isn’t any better. Ironically, they often portray boys as girly (as in relating to real girls, not the stereotypical kind). I don’t know if this is because they themselves think “other girls” besides themselves of course, are stereotypical and anything else must be attributed to boys, but this seems to be the case. Hence girly “cinnamon rolls” and pretty boy characters are what they identify with more than most girl characters in normal media.

Examples: Once-ler, Hiccup, Jack Frost, Snufkin, Alastor, and almost all anime boys that could’ve (and frankly should’ve) probably just been written as girls in the first place for once (instead of mostly making girls the love obsessed or materialistic freaks).

Another thing boys do when writing girls is use them as a tool to make the boys seem “goofier” or “edgier.” An example is Susie from Calvin and Hobbes. She’s unrealistically boring and easily grossed out by Calvin’s “weird” antics. In real life, girls aren’t impressed that easily and are likely to be doing those “wacky” things themselves. And no, this doesn't make them a tomboy. No, I’m not trying to make girl characters more masculine. It’s very average and feminine to talk about things like worms and mud. Nobody is special for doing so. Get over it.

Worse are the comics that make the girls even “cooler” than the boys for doing these normal things. (Because, of course, it’s so much more impressive for a girl to be “unladylike”).

In their own stories, girls also make boys unrealistically impressed with them, such as when they write about self inserts or Mary Sues. An annoying type of webcomic is one about a “quirky, goofy” girl where the boyfriend seems to exist to perpetually shake his head in awe at her mundane activities. “You’re talking to your cat in a baby voice? Ha ha, only you would do such a thing.” “You’re drinking four cups of coffee in a row? Ha ha, remind me how I met such a quirky individual.” “You hate children and only like puppies? Ha ha, there is truly nobody like you.”

When getting really carried away, some girls essentially write a love letter to themself through the mouth of a contrived love interest. It’s embarrassing to read the minute analysis of their own perceived specialness as if anybody else in the world would study them with a microscope that way and come to their desired conclusions. Slice of Life webcomics are truly the definition of Narcissus staring at himself in a mirror.

I bring this all up because I know certain boys who post Instagram pictures of themselves in bright pink Disney princess dresses (based on characters invented by men of all things), and long golden cosplay wigs, and say they wonder if they’re really meant to be a girl. Without starting a political debate, I just want to say hold up. *Mr. Krabs voice* “...Do you actually know anything about girls, SpongeBob?” (Or are you just basing your idea on superficial stereotypes made up by men like yourself?)

Frankly in a lot of cases they definitely don’t know about real girls. They probably don’t even understand about the typical webcomic thing I just explained. They probably don’t do real girly things like read Harry Potter ten times, write fanfiction, rant about specific social issues on twitter, make up fifty OCs, watch True Crime until three in morning, go through a goth or emo stage, (or better yet a “not like other girls” stage) etc, etc. Same with an awful lot of girls who think they know about boys because they identify with fake (ironically girly) characters in media.

Yeah, I wanted to be the “cool tomboy character” too, until I was forced to get a dad job with adult men. BOOOOOOOOORING (no offense).

Obviously when I wasn’t a baby I realized girls are different and have a variety of traits. They aren’t just the “boring pink ones” they’re made out to be in stories. They’re usually more like the “fun” characters even if they’re not portrayed that way very much.

This might be speculation, but maybe girls are having more identity crises these days because our society made no place for them at all. They’re basically invisible in media and think they don’t exist or they’re rare (“if you have a real personality you’re not like other girls! You’re odd! You’re super special and weird!”). It might be partly our fault for confusing fantasy with reality. Normally I wouldn’t say cheesy cartoons about pink sparkly girls are bad things. Obviously they’re fake. Why should anyone take stories so seriously that they actually believe they accurately represent what it means to be a girl?

Well… then why are people these days treating this freakish fake version of being a girl as real? It’s literally causing people to identify as different genders. It’s basically the reason the new meaning of the word “gender” was invented. Yikes. Stop. Back up. That wasn’t even accurate.

Girls never identified with that very much and now they’re going crazy trying to get away from it. Boys think it’s some kind of deep identity they can adopt. The reality is, we were trying to get away from it the whole time they themselves were inventing it.

When a girl identifies as a boy, it’s not because there’s a specific identity they’re attracted to. It’s because of a narrow one they’re trying to escape. They misguidedly attribute anything else to being “not like other girls” aka a man.

Whereas when boys identify as girls, they’re often taking on a narrow, freakish, superficial costume that didn’t naturally originate with females.

Look at the “male” pages on DeviantArt. This site is filled with males perpetuating the stupidest most idiotic superficial cartoon girl characters. It’s all well and fine when it’s just supposed to be a silly cartoon. But they’re actually not treating it that way. They’re often fetishes or taken on as superficial (treated as significant) identities. It’s to the point that it’s sinister. Whatever it is, it’s not anything to do with real biological females in any way shape or form.

So anyway… I guess you can have your freakish gross pink materialistic stereotype that you made up yourselves. For all the confused girls I just feel sympathy that they think they aren’t even girls anymore because of this partly stupid, partly sinister stereotype. It sure caused a lot of confusion and I just hope people wake up.