In low voices, heads ducked in closer over the table, the women verbally eviscerate another who is not present. Or, as I walk through Target, in between commenting on clothes they simply must have, I hear two college girls slice and dice the reputation of a girl who they both considered their friend.
What to say?
I remember watching a particularly awful episode of Bridezillas in which the mother was getting remarried and the 20-something daughter was the most awful, selfish, childish, out-of-line woman I’d ever seen. She carried on and berated and tore her mother down in every way possible, lashing out at her mother’s soon-to-be-husband until, in one very revealing moment, the groom summed it all up to the camera: women don’t want other women happy. He was obviously saddened and angered by that fact; it appeared to make little sense to him yet he could see that that was the case.
That’s a very sad statement, though it likely can be extended to saying that people don’t want other people happy.
Misery loves company, and we’re all tired of being alone. Another’s happiness makes our sadness all the more bitter.
The understanding of how women are in constant competition with other women over everything — looks, home, family, status, security, life — is the foundation for all marketing done towards them. Fifth Avenue is built on women being at some kind of war with each other, even their closest friends. We are in competition with ourselves, with our friends, and with nameless women in magazines.
Miserable.
I remember in High School reading Frank Stockton’s story “The Lady or the Tiger?“, a story which leaves the ending up to the reader. We were to debate the story and support, with reason, which we thought happened. Did the man open the door to find the tiger, or to find the lady?
Everyone mostly agreed that his true love would never direct him to open a door and be eaten by a tiger, that she would, since she loved him, direct him to the door with the lady behind it. Even if she knew she could never be with him again, she’d rather see him alive and with another woman than dead.
I sat there in silence, before I couldn’t take it anymore.
“Are you kidding? Lots of women would rather see him dead than have another woman win. Let’s get real. At that point, it isn’t even about the guy, but the other woman. She’s competition.”
That was in high school, and this is now, and I’ve not learned it. I regularly go and feed someone to the tiger, in some way, maybe just by rolling my eyes or muttering under my breath.
It’s an intentional effort to put that to death in myself. I’m not there quite yet.
