An ENFJ quality time Cancer girlie walks into a bar

I recently had a conversation that went something like this:

I’ve been thinking lately about the linguistic device that is the word “girlie.” “Girlie” transforms things you like or do into things you are. I am not “a girl who likes tahini”; I am a tahini girlie. A distance freestyle girlie. A trial-and-error girlie. I am such a stick figure girlie.

When I first started writing fiction, I filled out a lot of character templates. They’re those fill-in-the-blank personality forms that ask you about your characters’ favorite colors and Myers-Briggs types. This is a great way to waste time. It’s not a great way to write a book. The thing is, it doesn’t actually mean anything if a character is an ENFJ or an ISTP. In what context? To what end? How does it move the story and say something meaningful about humanity? I would spend hours trying to connect all this discordant junk only to realize that what I had assembled always looked boring and formulaic. Of course it was formulaic—humans aren’t formulas.

A few years back, I read Merve Emre’s The Personality Brokers, which is about the history of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator and its creators. One of the firmest rules in MBTI-land is that types are fixed; if someone claims they changed—they used to be introverted but are now extroverted; they used to be more logical, but now they’re more open to their emotions—they’re lying. This is patently ridiculous from both a story perspective and a human perspective. Stories are about change. Lives are about growth. Of course our personalities aren’t fixed. At the same time, I understand the appeal of having pieces of identity that feel steady and reliable. “This is who I am,” MBTI says, “and no one can take that away from me.”

Sometimes I wonder if I would’ve gotten into astrology if I had a better star sign. Alas, I am a Cancer, objectively the worst name and the worst symbol. (I care not for crabs. Crabs are bugs.) According to memes, Cancers enjoy passive aggression and crying under heavy blankets in a fog of incense and melancholia.

If I had been a sign that seemed to champion something that felt true or precise about me, I might’ve taken up the mantle. A few years ago, I saw an article about how there should “actually” be a thirteenth sign, and in this version of the zodiac, I would be a Gemini. I was thrilled. A Gemini! I hear they love to gossip! I will accept my membership card! But I’m told articles like this resurface regularly, and real astrology people ignore them. And, frankly, I would, too, if my star sign had helped me define myself.

When I was a kid, I liked stories where characters had neatly divided worlds: the Percy Jackson demigod cabins, Hogwarts houses (rip), Avatar bending styles, Hunger Games districts, Divergent factions, Warriors cat clans—on and on. These stories compelled me because I craved community. I wanted to belong to a group of people bound by something meaningful; something fixed; something that told me what kind of person I was. And wouldn’t it be nice if any of that were true? Wouldn’t it be nice if we didn’t need to do the hard work of identity formation on our own?

The older I get, the more I think no, and the less these story structures appeal to me. I don’t know that we need more systems that insist on unequivocal truths about ourselves. There is, in retrospect, an obvious sort of irony to J.K. Rowling’s terfdom—Hogwarts houses have from the start promised that the person we are, think we are, think we want to be—the person a hat presumes us to be at age twelve—is the person we shall needfully remain for all time.

When these types of fixed groups started to lose their shine, I obsessed over slightly looser ways of organizing people. Category systems that still felt revelatory but allowed for more movement. I wanted to know every stranger’s attachment style. Their partner’s attachment style. Their love language. Whether they had the same love language as their partner and whether they felt this made a difference.

But recently, I’ve been gravitating toward the identifiers that just don’t mean much on their own. The labels that imply a constellation of other hobbies and habits and ways of moving through the world. Maybe low-stakes identifiers offer less in terms of information, but I think, in a way, they offer more in terms of community. Not a distance freestyle girlie? Okay, can we both be yoga girlies? No? Are we both coffee girlies? No?

Okay, well, are you a tahini girlie? Yes? I knew it.

I always love a tahini girlie.

Currently reading: I have already recommended Eve, but shortly after my original rec, I was tragically separated from my copy. We have been reunited; the book remains a sciencey banger.

Non-urgent thought of the week: Do PR crisis managers use bots to artificially inflate social media support? Asking for absolutely no reason in particular.

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