Collectively, women spend thousands of dollars and hours putting on make-up as well as thousands on fashion. In a lot of cases, it’s not just because they want to, but because they feel a need to.
Ladies succumb to the subliminal pressure to be pretty, well-dressed, and confident 365 days a year. A lot of this pressure stems from our family and the media. Not a day goes by where magazines like OK! and People aren’t criticizing famous women for their physical attributes or something they wore.
In some cultures, women are expected to be curvy, while in other cultures, women should be as thin as possible, and sometimes meeting these expectations become a bit much to handle.The media especially sets expectations by constantly reminding us what we should wear, or what we should look like. So as women hear and see these things, we embody this concept that we are not good enough without these outer adornings. As a result of these factors, we often feel the need to compete with every female we see.
We begin shopping at different stores, so that our clothes will look better than theirs. We put on make-up even when we may not feel like it. We try to outdo them by doing things that we would never think of such as skipping class and partying, and even join certain social groups and organizations to feel superior. Society tells us that if we are the best in these physical areas, we will win the affection of a man.
“She has a good job and the nicest clothes.” “Her hair is fabulous.” “The boy she dates is perfect.” “Her body is picture-perfect and her skin is flawless.” As we see other females, we are constantly comparing ourselves and thinking of ways that we can outshine them, which leads us to this weird competition amongst one another. But the confidence that we possess and exude has to be strong enough so that we don’t feel the need to be envious of the next girl.
However, there is a thin line between being confident and being cocky. Once we’ve reached a certain level of self-assurance, we make other girls around us feel worse about themselves through our actions. Although we may not blatantly say “I look better than her,” it is implied. Acting this way makes other women feel as though they cannot openly talk to each other without being judged or looked down upon.
There are a few ways to prevent the desire of wanting to be better than the next woman. One way is to be comfortable in your own skin and embrace your own imperfections. We can also learn to give compliments in order to uplift one another as opposed to making everything feel like a competition. In addition, we can have transparent discussions that are centered around the adversities women face, which could possibly eliminate a lot of the rivalry amongst women and build a close-knit sisterhood.
So while the unspoken competition is very real and rarely discussed, it is certainly a conversation that each of us can benefit from.