Girl hate. It’s a cycle. You hate another girl because of something she said about you behind your back so naturally, to get back at her; you talk about her behind her back. It’s all so petty and foolish yet; almost all girls are guilty to this crime. I’m in no way trying to stereotype girls, or saying that guys don’t do this…don’t get me wrong – both men and women are equally as guilty for this. However, something about the way women do it just tends to get that much more nasty from what I have experienced. That being said – as a young woman as I’m sure many of you are, I hate how much girl on girl hate there is and I hate where it happens – behind the girl’s back. It’s so upsetting to know that you can walk into a room and feel as though you are loved and cared for by the people in it and just minutes after leaving be completely and utterly bashed. I’ve seen it done countless times. A girl comes up to a group of girls and talks to them and all is good and well until she leaves then the group of girls start commenting on how annoying she is, or how ugly her outfit is. It’s as if it’s a reflex.
What I think is the biggest issue when it comes to girl on girl hate is we don’t realize how truly cruel we are being in the midst of it all. We think that calling another girl a name behind her back to a few friends is no biggie. However it actually is a big deal. What we are really doing when we make fun of other females behind their backs is making it okay to say negative things about girls and how they carry themselves when in reality it’s none of our concern. One insult can really hurt someone’s feelings and that feeling may stick with them for life. Our words are so, so, so powerful. No one has said it quite like Ms. Nobury, the math teacher in the ever-so-quotable movie Mean Girls, when she said, “…you all have go to stop calling each other sluts and whores. It just makes it ok for guys to call you sluts and whores.” That is exactly it. When you insult another female you are making it okay for others to do just the same. In a world where women as a group are so overlooked in so many areas, and seen as nothing more than how we look in the eyes of some people it is so important that we stick together and create a strong frontier for our gender. We are only going to be as strong as we treat one another, which from the way I see it now is pretty weak. We will get nowhere progressive if we keep holding each other back. Women are such role models to so many young girls out there and we need to provide a great example and install that way of thinking from a young age. Girl hate in laymen’s term, has just got to stop.