You're damned if you do, and damned if you don't : A multimodal critical discourse analysis of the portrayal of “pick me girls” on TikTok.

This bachelor’s thesis examines Swedish women’s ironic portrayals of “pick me girls” on TikTok and how these can be understood in relation to internalized sexism. Through a multimodal critical discourse analysis, the study analyzes linguistic and visual expressions in the videos to identify the discourses on femininity that are conveyed. By applying a theoretical framework consisting of discourse, irony, internalized sexism and postfeminism, this study could discover the meaning of the videos on TikTok. The results show that irony in these portrayals serves as a way to distance oneself from traditional feminist discourses, which can be understood as a postfeministic act. Furthermore, the “pick me girl” trend is discussed as a manifestation of the competitive dynamic that characterizes internalized sexism. Women’s participation in the trend reproduces the very competition they criticize, as they attempt to strengthen their own position within a gender hierarchy by devaluing “pick me girls”. The study’s main conclusion is that women who ironically portray “pick me girls” risk reproducing sexism to the same extent as the women they critique. This highlights how internalized sexism operates on multiple levels and how humor can function both as a tool for resistance and as mechanism for maintaining existing power structures.