Please don’t check any of this with a real medical professional unless you want a stupid amount of crazy looks and an unnecessary $50 copay.
So you think you might be a hot girl who loves pickles. Have you noticed a change in your appetite? Do you constantly Google pickle recipes but have zero intention of making them? Did you recently buy $35 pickle earrings on TikTok? Are you captioning everything “hot girls love pickles” and are concerned? If so, there’s a high possibility you’re a Pickle Girl.
While there’s no definite cure for being a Pickle Girl, it can be effectively managed and even embraced, as attested by individuals already living with it and thriving, honestly.
What Is A Pickle Girl?
“Being a Pickle Girl means, firstly, you love pickles, and also, you’re obviously hot,” TikToker SJ Bleau, @thepicklegirl, tells Betches. The influencer posts almost entirely about her love for the salty snack to her 1.4M followers. She is, literally, the Pickle Girl.
“I’ll wear a whole pickle outfit outside,” she says. “If anyone gives me anything pickles-related, I will wear it.”
Like SJ, many pickle enthusiasts proudly display their snack allegiance, as evidenced by the now sold-out Pickle Princess tee on ASOS and the viral canned pickle sweatshirt by Bad Addiction Boutique, which surpassed $1 million in sales. Eddie Andre, cofounder of Grillos, tells Betches the brand made Sterling Silver pickle chains and sold them for $800 a piece.
But let it be known, being a Pickle Girl isn’t merely a passing fad or a temporary phase for certain individuals; for some, it can be a lifelong commitment — less of a choice and more of an involuntary personality trait that only gets stronger over time. “For my birthday, my friends would show up with pickle jars at school and I’d have pickles. I was fully stocked up in my locker in high school,” adds SJ. “I found that a lot of people love pickles as much as I do, too, but for me, it was never a trend. It was more of a lifestyle.”
https://www.tiktok.com/@thepicklegirl/video/6922217065549958406
Eddie agrees, adding that treating pickles as a lifestyle “transcends generations.” The founder claims Grillos was the first brand to acknowledge this level of pickle-love with merch and brand collabs.
“I think social media has helped give a microphone to that type of lifestyle,” he explains. “It’s more so giving pickle lovers the tools to express themselves.”
Symptoms
Symptoms of being a Pickle Girl are varied and extensive. Not all Pickle Girls will exhibit the same level of severity as someone like SJ, but that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be taken as seriously.
Common Symptoms — 3 in 10
- Captioning IG and TikTok posts with “hot girls love pickles.”
- Regularly guzzling pickle juice the morning after a night out because you saw one TikTok video about the electrolytes they have.
- Saving five different pickle dip tutorials, but always just buying it instead.
- Making the pickleback your drink of choice, even if your Hinge date gave you a funny look when you ordered it.
- Looking like an idiot the moment you first realized regular pickles are in fact just cucumbers.
- Feeling strongly about the time saved eating a pickle over the sink than actually getting out a bowl.
Rare Symptoms — 1 in 100
- Ordering a pickle claw clip and putting a “Big Pickle Energy” sticker on your work laptop.
- Planning on dressing as a sexy pickle for Halloween. Your group chat turned down your group costume suggestion of a Van Holten pickle kit. Apparently it’s not fair for whoever has to be sexy Takis?
- Attempting to pickle your own veg at home, panic-Googling “botulism stats 2023” at 2am, and then throwing away said jars after reading about the Bordeaux restaurant tragedy.
- Adding Dillilah to your baby name list (spelt this way for obvious reasons). If it’s a boy, they’d be the only Claussen in their class.
- Asking if someone prefers refrigerated or shelf pickles has become one of your routine first date questions, after “do you have roommates?” but before “do you have children?”
Rise in Diagnoses
“It’s definitely grown over the last two years,” says Eddie. When Grillos started 15 years ago, “pickles weren’t cool at all.” Now, the brand has over 80k followers and even runs NYC pop-up shops and Grillos University, in which college ambassadors throw pickle-themed tailgates.
In 2020, 245 million Americans consumed pickles, according to Statista’s analysis of the U.S. census and Simmons National Consumer Survey, but by 2024, that number is expected to rise by about 28 million. “Every year I think , but it just keeps extending into the next year and the next,” says Eddie.
The rise in popularity has led to pickle chips, soda and, erm, freeze pops? When SJ moved from Canada to the US, she says she was in shock at how crazy pickling could be. “People were like, ‘Oh, you want to try pickled cotton candy?’ And I was like… what?”
Causes of Being a Pickle Girl
So your symptoms point to a Pickle Girl diagnosis, but why? Maybe it’s in your DNA with a mom who ate her bodyweight in pickles during pregnancy. You’re pretty sure your amniotic fluid was pure brine and that somewhere in the world, it could be considered a delicacy. Maybe you decided you were a fan during peak Jersey Shore hype after watching Snooki devour fried ones on the boardwalk.
Or maybe, just maybe, you’ve always liked a pickle’s acquired taste and how cool it made you feel. It’s polarizing in a way that’s slightly less risky than asking someone if they love or hate the COVID-19 vaccine or the death penalty. Case in point: “It’s okay if you don’t , but I feel like there has to be something wrong , because who doesn’t?” says SJ. (On pickles, not the death penalty.)
Iz Eats Everything, a 1 million follower-strong food TikToker, points to the ASMR aspect of it all. “There’s just something so satisfying about that crunch. That bite into a super flavorful pickle. It’s just 10 out of 10,” she says. Who needs to virtually visit a Japanese head spa when you can hear that satisfying crunch with the fridge light beaming on you for double sensory tingles? In other words, pickles may have always just “felt right” to you.
“I get a lot of comments that are like, ‘I hate pickles, but you make me want to try them,’” says Iz. “‘Just watching you make them makes me want to try them.’”
Living as a Pickle Girl
At-home pickling is how a whole heap of pickle fans are incorporating the food into their lives now and helping them come to terms with their life-long fate as a Pickle Girl. #pickletok has 640M views on TikTok with communities of first-timers documenting their journeys.
“I pickled ring bologna,” recalls Iz. “It flopped for me so many times when I first started,” she adds, listing that she’s pickled all vegetables, meat, onions, and eggs. “I’ve done just about every combination you can make and I’m still getting crazy comments all the time.”
If dunking everything but the kitchen sink (because you need it to hover over and eat, obviously) into boiled white vinegar doesn’t sound like your thing, you could sign up for a monthly pickle subscription service. Sure, it might not be as mature as a cheese and wine box or a New York Times subscription, but you gotta do what you gotta do.
The best means of coping, however, is a pickle pincher. (We advise you to check if your medical insurance covers this equipment before purchasing.) There’s no shame in being a Pickle Girl, but there is some in being spotted finger-deep in a jar of brine by co-workers and then having nowhere to wipe them after.
Treatments
There are none, sorry… apart from maybe the knowledge that you might look back on your pickle princess tee the same way you look at your “Bacon is Life” beanie from 2013. :/
#picklegirl currently has over 293M views on TikTok, so despite there being no promising end to your diagnosis, it’s reassuring to know that you’re certainly not the only one. Online communities can provide new information and advice, as medical research (okay, memes) about being a Pickle Girl continues. You are not alone. <3
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