There is something almost perfectly pick-me about Pauline Hanson.

The term “pick-me girl” is usually cast around on TikTok and social media as an insult for women who seek male approval by distancing themselves from other women.

She is “not like other girls”. She doesn’t need feminism, she doesn’t complain and she doesn’t ask for special treatment. She is independent, uncomplicated and, crucially, willing to tell other women that they are the problem.

The pick-me is not simply a woman who disagrees with other women. The term describes something more specific: A performance of difference in which a woman gains status, approval or belonging by positioning herself against the interests, experiences or concerns of other women.

In that sense, Hanson may be the ultimate political pick-me. Her recent comments describing domestic violence as a “two-way street” and suggesting women should simply leave abusive relationships are a particularly stark example. The problem is not that women should be supported to leave violence. Of course they should. The problem is the familiar shift in responsibility: From asking why men perpetrate violence to asking why women don’t leave.

It is a move that fits precisely within the pick-me logic. Rather than challenging the structures that produce gendered inequality, the pick-me distinguishes herself from the women who do. She becomes the “reasonable” woman. The woman who doesn’t complain. The woman who understands that men are just men. The woman who tells everyone else to toughen up.

There is a particular kind of political power in being the woman who says women are asking for too much.

Hanson is not alone in this. American politics has produced an entire ecosystem of women whose political identities are partly constructed through rejecting feminism and distancing themselves from other women.

One-time vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin offers an example of the same archetype. Her “mama grizzly” persona was built around being a strong, authentic, ordinary woman who did not need the approval of the feminist establishment. Her political power came, in part, from presenting herself as evidence that women could succeed without feminism.

Rather than expanding the possibilities for women in politics, Palin’s historic candidacy ultimately constrained them by suggesting that women’s political legitimacy depended on conforming to conventional ideals of femininity and maternal identity.

Then there is Candace Owens, perhaps the purest influencer version of the political pick-me. Her public identity is built around eliminating progressive ideas about gender, race and feminism and positioning herself as the woman willing to say what “they” don’t want women to say. Her gender becomes part of her political authority: You can’t accuse me of misogyny because I’m a woman.

Margaret Thatcher offers a more complicated historical example. I wouldn’t call her a “pick-me” in the contemporary TikTok sense, but she represents the same tension around the exceptional woman. Thatcher succeeded stunningly within a male-dominated political system without positioning herself as a feminist leader. Her success could, intentionally or otherwise, be read as evidence that women don’t need structural change – they simply need to be exceptional enough to succeed.

This is the common thread.

The pick-me is often the woman who becomes evidence that the system isn’t broken.

She says: I made it. Why can’t you?

This is where the concept becomes more than a social media insult. It is fundamentally about gender and power. Historically, women have been rewarded for demonstrating that they are not difficult, demanding or threatening to male authority. The “good” woman is accommodating, she understands, she doesn’t make things awkward.

The political pick-me takes that script and turns it into an identity. She says: I’m not one of those women.

Hanson’s version is particularly effective because her political persona has long been built around authenticity. She is positioned as the ordinary Australian woman who says what everyone else is supposedly thinking but is too afraid to say. She is not polished, not politically correct and not interested in elite approval. She said exactly that on Seven’s Spotlight:

“I’m not, you know, the regimented politician giving you straight answers like everyone. Half of them can’t even answer your question anyway.”

But authenticity is not the absence of performance. In fact, “authenticity” can be one of the most powerful performances in politics.

The claim to simply be “telling it like it is” can make an argument appear immune to criticism. If you challenge the statement, you are not just disagreeing with a politician; you are supposedly attacking the speaker’s authenticity. The person who says the unpopular thing becomes courageous by definition, regardless of whether what they are saying is accurate, fair or constructive.

It’s the woman who gains power by convincing men, and everyone else, that women don’t need protecting from the systems that disadvantage them.

I would say, it’s all just internalised patriarchy.

But is that all it is, or is it also a politically expedient platitude: One that flatters those in power while obscuring the realities of systemic disadvantage?

Dr Lisa Portolan is a casual academic at the University of Technology Sydney. Her PhD on dating apps and intimacy from Western Sydney University was published in 2024. It has also been released as a book: Love, intimacy and online dating (Routledge, 2023)