I’ve claimed many times that I’m not a lady’s lady. I went to an all girls Catholic high school for six years, so I’d had oestrogen up to my eyeballs by the time I graduated. It took a long time for me to learn to trust women, because high school was horrendous. Eye rollingly ridiculous. I had rumours spread about me in year 10 because I had a ‘lesbian phone’. I’m not even kidding. I wasn’t invited to a sleepover for a year because of that rumour. The power of these young women was extraordinary and terrifying. When they combined their powers they could take down teachers, render anyone a social outcast and manipulate boys like putty.
My way of dealing with this was avoidance. Rather than separate the good girls from the bad girls, I just hung out with guys instead. Easy.
The thing I’ve learned, my friends, is that we are all good girls. We are. We’re just fed a lot of B.S early on in life, that makes us believe that we are in competition with each other. Which is utter crap. There’s no winner in life. We are not all competing for the same top spot. We are all running our own race against ourselves, to get to our own destination. We aren’t all after the same pot of gold. There’s a pot for every one of us, but let me tell you, we have dick all chance of any of us getting to it, if we keep tripping each other up along the way or purposefully pretending that we don’t know a short cut for a fellow lady.
Have you ever not told a girlfriend about a job advertisement because you didn’t want the competition? Or not encouraged your friend to study opera because you were scared she’d be really great at it? Have you ever known that a great guy likes one of your girlfriends but not told her because you were jealous? I’ve seen women gang up and tear other women down and somehow make it look like an accident. I’ve seen women be phased out of friendship groups, be selectively not invited to social events and I’ve seen women actively point out when fellow female co-workers leave early so they in comparison would appear more dedicated. I’ve seen women flirt with other women’s men, right in front of them. I’ve seen women literally turn their backs to other women at dinner tables, trying to block them from the conversation.
We need to stop this. Now. I’m dead fucking serious.
I’ve seen it everywhere. In mothers groups, in the work place, at schools and even in social circles. It’s disgusting and unimpressive.
Do you want to know what would be impressive? Is if we used our combined powers to kick the world’s arse. We could run alongside each other in life and be each others coaches. We could continue to run our races alone, but we’d finish it faster if we had our lady friends to point out the shortcuts, to encourage us to keep running when we are exhausted and to be there to greet us with a glass of champers when we cross the finish line.
There’s not only one book deal, not only one amazing wedding dress, not only one successful actress, not only one CEO job, not only one breathtaking apartment, not only one promotion, and not only one decent man for us all to share. Just because another woman succeeds does not mean that you won’t.
How utterly foolish of any of us to think that. It seems that we may be our own collective worst enemy. How embarrassing.
The world is a giant block of rich, delicious chocolate. Wouldn’t we feel better if we shared it?
Oh and one more thing. We really are all good girls. Lets remember that.
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