“Women would run the world if they didn’t hate each other.” – A quote by Rachel McAdmas I heard one lazy day when I was so bored I decided to watch the special features of Mean Girls.
This really stuck with me because of how ridiculous it sounded at the time, when in reality I would see that become to truth of my life in years to come. Why is it that the life of a girl, starting from a very young age, is riddled with drama, conflict among friends and judgements from fellow females?
As women in a modern society we can do it all. Women are incredibly capable and can have extremely successful professional careers as well as families.
Why is it that girls need to always be in competition? What is the core of our ongoing inter gender conflict? Obviously there is the typical jealousy complex that most females seem to have, which I am 100% also guilty of.
If we stopped viewing other women as competition and actually banded together we could accomplish so much more and gain much stronger friendships.
There are the typical conflicts friends are about boys, or clothes, or other friends, but we shouldn’t let those conflicts dictate our friendships. The classic, “you stole my guy” fight has some validity to it when you break it down into the fact that a friend didn’t value your feelings enough to restrain themselves, but that being said, why is that something that should end a friendship?
Girls place too much value on details. Yes, if a friend does something mean to you that is unfortunate. However, there is this thing called Gottman’s ratio where for every one bad thing done within a relationship, there need to be 5 good things in order for the relationship to remain healthy and worth maintaining. Why do girls fixate on bad things and discredit the good? Everyone makes mistakes and some own up to them.
Too many friendships are burned because of pointless argument or stupid reasons.
Emma Watson, a role model for many young women (me included, because I mean come on, she’s perfect) said in an interview “Some women can be incredibly prejudiced against other women!” She is someone who speaks out for gender equality, but how can that be accomplished when it’s women who bring down other women.
There is a saying that goes, boys come and go, but friends are for life.
This continuous state of hate, and fear, that plagues the life of a female from the time of adolescence has hindered girls’ self esteem.
While thinking about this concept, I realized that in order to accomplish this seemingly impossible goal of inter gender harmony, I needed to look at how the males within society deal with similar issues and not have the same problems that we do.
When guys fight, whether it’s over a girl, a video game, a leftover slice of pizza or a fantasy football league, they don’t care as much about the details. They realize that there is a bigger picture and that’s friendship as a whole, whether they consciously think that deeply into it or not. Why let the last slice of pizza define a friendship? The details don’t matter, and they only hinder the good that can come later on.
Photo: Getty