Drew Afaulo knows a thing or two about getting real on the internet. It is, after all, how she gained 8 million followers (and counting) on TikTok. Her podcast just had the entire internet freaking out over the fact that she had the one and only Chappell Roan on for the ultimate chat. And now she’s taking it all to the next level with her debut book, Loud, which focuses on her own real life and being honest with her audience in a new way.
“It was very therapeutic in a lot of ways. I feel like there are certain themes I discussed in the book that I’ve never talked about publicly,” Drew revealed to Cosmopolitan.
Loud, which is set to be released by AUWA on July 30, 2024, “gives them a little bit more perspective and understanding about me. It’s a different lens on how they see me,” she noted.
The process was different for Drew than for most other writers. She noted that her team asked for “15 to 20 topics that I felt very strongly about and that I felt like I could write about or expand on in a way that I hadn’t been able to do online, just for the sake of time.” Afterward, she would have talking sessions with them several times a week, which she said she had to apologize because “the way I could talk for hours. If no one stops me, I’m off to the races.”
Afterward, she would take those recorded sessions and use them as inspiration, especially looking into the reactions of two women she worked with throughout the process which helped her with the actual writing.
“It was a little harder for me to get a little vulnerable there. I struggle with it as Virgo. When I was initially writing it, it was a little too superficial. A little too top shelf,” Drew revealed.
Even the topics, which ranges from motherhood to her sister’s coming out to being a pick-me girl, surprised her. But talking about it and putting it all together wasn’t even the hardest part.
“We kicked around like 10 to 15 titles and none of them worked. It’s something that you want to stand out and really speaks to the themes are, but at the same time, it’s going to live forever,” she said.
Drew revealed that the universal experiences and topics made her “not want it to be marketed as like an influencer book,” which she revealed to her team early on in the process. And it has nothing to do with her idea of influencing. In fact, she pointed out that “it inspired me more than anything to not be as nervous about the fact that my roots and my start was from social media.”
“I just think if I’m gonna write something, I really want it to be powerful, I want it to resonate in whatever capacity that looks like,” she continued.
Which is a lot easier to say especially when she has the one and only New York Times Best Selling Author and legend Questlove by your side and publishing your book. Their initial conversation shocked her, especially since he decided to meet her in person. But there’s one point in that encounter that still stays with her.
“He told me, I see multiple books out of you. And he’s a genius. I’m inclined to believe him. He gave me a lot of confidence in that realm, so I’m super open to the idea of writing another book.”
And yes, she totally has more to say.
“I was a little worried at the beginning because I was like, Man, I know I can yap, but I really hope that like I got enough in me for a book. And then turns out I had to peel back a bit. It was way too much yapping.”
Thankfully, you’re not going to have to wait too long to see just what more she has to talk about. In fact, you can check out an exclusive excerpt below. Just make sure to pre-order Loud before you dive right in!
An Excerpt From Loud: Accept Nothing Less Than the Life You Deserve
By Drew Afaulo
3
Confessions of a Teenage Pick-Me
People love to accuse me of being “too hard on men.” They love to say, “but not all men!” And by “people,” I mean bigoted people, or bigot sympathizers . . . which makes their opinion automatically invalid to me. Their opinion doesn’t mean anything to me for multiple reasons we’ll get into, but the reality is that, no matter how great a man can be on an individual basis, all men benefit from the patriarchy. So yes, that includes men you love and admire, and even the men in my own life, like my brother, my dad, or Pili. I’m not pulling any punches even when it comes to them, but especially when it comes to you.
The world is literally set up to provide cis men with unlimited chances, and I’m just not interested in contributing to that. Instead, I make it my life’s mission to extend that energy and generosity to women and femmes, who I will support and ride for until my last breath. But the funny—or maybe fucked-up—thing is that women are often men’s biggest defenders. As much positive feedback as I’ve gotten from people who feel empowered by my content, I’ve gotten nearly as much criticism from people in my comments trying to “not all men” me. What really disheartens me is when it’s women doing that. They try to tell me that I’ve gotten it all wrong, that even though the men I fuck up online are willfully bigoted on the internet, I still “went too far.” These men don’t even meet the basic minimum of human respect for other people, and yet some women feel the need to defend the entire male gender in my comment section.
To those women, first of all, I want you to dig deep down and examine just why my videos are setting you off the way they are. Respectfully, it’s not even about you, so why do you feel the need to respond? Did I call out your boyfriend/fiancé/husband by name? No? Then why do you feel so personally attacked? Why do you feel the need to take up this mantle fora man you don’t even know? A man who, in his own words, has expressed an extreme distaste for women? Have you considered the fact that this may be something you need to address within yourself or directly with your boyfriend/fiancé/husband, and not me, a total stranger on the internet?
But unless a woman is outright hateful and abusive to others, I don’t believe in using my platform to shame or call them out the same way I call out terrible men, because I know that if they’re in my comments trying to defend an awful and mediocre man they don’t even know, they’re, unfortunately, still in their pick-me era.
If you don’t know what a pick-me is, just think about the phrase. Imagine a group of women standing before some (most definitely undeserving) man, all begging him to notice them, to choose them, to pick them. I’m unsure of the terminology’s exact origins, but I believe it comes from the climactic scene in Grey’s Anatomy where Meredith Grey is begging Derek Shepherd to “pick me” instead of another woman. Y’all remember the scene, right? “Pick ME, choose ME, love ME” . . .The sentiment is both literal and metaphorical. One woman leveraging her self-worth in exchange for a man’s affection, all at the expense of another woman. This might mean engaging in “not like other girls” behavior, like shunning or disparaging interests or hobbies more commonly held by women and femmes or exaggerating or pretending to have an interest in certain things that are more appealing to men in order to be “one of the boys.” Or it might mean allowing certain disrespectful behavior to slide just to show how “cool” and “chill”you are.
Just think about the “cool girl” monologue from the movie/book Gone Girl, delivered by the antiheroine Amy Dunne, who fakes her own murder and frames her husband when she discovers he’s been cheating on her even after she uprooted her life to move to his hometown in Missouri with him. As Amy describes her, the “cool girl” adores sports, poker, dirty jokes, and burping, plays video games, and drinks cheap beer. Is understanding. Never gets angry. Just smiles in a chagrined, loving manner and lets men do whatever they want. To me, though, the most striking part of this monologue is the moment when she reveals the “cool girl” for the sham that it is: Men actually think this girl exists. Maybe they’re fooled because so many women are willing to pretend to be this girl.
Unfortunately, women are willing to pretend to be this girl, because when you’re brainwashed by the patriarchy, being “cool” is the greatest compliment you can receive from a man. It’s almost regarded as a badge of honor, or a crumb of validation we’re meant to not only live off of, but continue to chase. Because that one word implies everything a girl “shouldn’t” be: jealous (just because she wants assurance from her partner), demanding (just because she doesn’t let her partner always prioritize hangouts with “the boys” over doing housework or spending time as a couple), hysterical (just because she’s rightfully angry about discovering that he’s been sliding into other girls’ DMs)—aka, you know, just logical reactions. But then again, the very definition of misogyny is that men don’t see women as deserving bare-minimum respect.
The first time I watched this movie, I was nineteen, and never had I felt so personally seen while hearing words that put so much of the world around me into perspective, because sadly, seeking male validation is something all women and femmes have suffered from at one point or another in their lives, myself included. Having that realization really triggered a flashback to some of my memories. How many times had I let male behavior slide in order not to kick up a fuss or seem difficult? And for what? A fleeting acknowledgment of chillness by a man with an underdeveloped frontal cortex? If that’s what being a “cool girl” gets you, then you know what? Fuck being cool and fuck being chill. If the reward for being the “coolest” girl in the room is a sliver of attention from the world’s most mediocre men, then I would happily commit to never being chill. And never being cool. But maybe the “cool girls” got one thing right after all: I wouldn’t be like the other girls—I was going to be much, much worse.
Of course, there are plenty of women and femmes who do enjoy football, dirty jokes, burping, and cheap beer. I, personally, am fond of a few of them. The difference between teenage Drew and the Drew of today, though, is that I no longer think my interest in those things makes me special or different, nor do I want it to. I no longer give two shits if the thingsI like make me more or less appealing to men.
Because that is the essence of a pick-me, someone whose life is so geared toward male approval that it colors everything she does. That desire for male approval is what underwrites a pick-me’s belief that somehow no other woman likes a specific thing, say, the NFL, the same way she does, with the same expertise or knowledge, and so she can only legitimately discuss it with men. So it follows: if she is the only woman who can “relate” to men and/or discuss this interest with them, then she is more likely to be “picked” by men. The reductive math is quite simple.
Or think about the pick-me’s claim that she’s totally fine with how much her boyfriend salivates over Instagram models or flirts with his coworker, because she’s not like other girls who are jealous and insecure. But I’m here to tell you that having boundaries like this crossed by your monogamous partner is not something that you should have to normalize just to appease a man’s fantasies, and it doesn’t inherently make you insecure to care about holding those boundaries.The problem with this cavalier and misogynistic attitude is that not only is it delusional and dishonest, it’s a race to the bottom. If your approach to connecting with anyone, not just men, is based on superiority, then it will never provide a stable foundation for a meaningful relationship of any kind.
Pick-mes do not just operate in the interpersonal arena, but in professional spaces as well. I’ve been in many rooms where I’ve been the only woman and/or the only person of color, and it has never made me feel empowered or like a winner, just isolated and ignored. I can’t understand why anyone, but especially women/femmes who grow up in a patriarchy and watch the violence it inflicts on them, would subscribe to that isolating and lonely ideology.
I want to clarify before I go on, so that people don’t misunderstand. Although I don’t have any patience for the pick-me girl, I do have empathy for her. How could I not? Not only do I understand her, I was her. Even though I’ve always been outspoken, for almost my entire adolescence, from the start of middle school to my early college years, I craved male approval. It wasn’t a conscious decision, but it was an inevitable one. The experience of being indoctrinated into a misogynistic perspective when they are born into a patriarchy is one that is not exclusive to me. Looking back, I see how, for years,I would do things like prioritize men’s feelings over my own comfort or safety, or buy into the idea that receiving male attention somehow made me special. These were often men I didn’t even really know, much less like or respect, so the fact that I was letting their opinion rule my life and my self-esteem is ludicrous in retrospect.
So how can I not feel sorry for the pick-me? She is living a life devoid of color and unconditional love and support from women. Because just like I realized when I was younger, that is what life becomes when you gear it toward men: empty.
Excerpted from LOUD: Accept Nothing Less Than the Life You Deserve by Drew Afualo. Published by AUWA Books, an imprint of MCD / Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Copyright © 2024 by Drew Afualo Enterprises, LLC. All rights reserved.
Loud: Accept Nothing Less Than the Life You Deserve, by Drew Afualo will be released on July 30, 2024. To preorder the book, click on the retailer of your choice:
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