Women Supporting Women?

What’s real, what's fake and how to stop being a part of the problem.

A few years ago I was hired to be in a music video.

Here was the (totally unoriginal) storyline:

Famous, rich guy is 'a player' and is (somehow) successfully & sneakily dating 6 different women, all at one time, in addition to having a job, and all while singing (and looking) like an angel… blah, blah, blah.

Told you. Classic (boring) story.

Predictable for the venue.

BUT,

Here's the wild part...

By the end of the 4-minute song, the women find out about the deception and instead of tearing each other apart (literally or figuratively), they band together and confront the lying d*uche.

Which, you know… sounds cool, I guess, but never really made much sense to me.

Not because there’s anything wrong with it of course. But because I've NEVER seen anything play out that way in real life - ever.

THIS story is true & would have been way more believable

12-year-old It girl: “Crystal only has clear skin because she has a lot of sex.”

12-year-old Me: “Woah, I’m sorry… WHAT?”

HORROR.

She repeated it again and added… “Yah, it’s totally true. I guess she doesn’t have much else to do with her time since no one likes her & she doesn’t have any friends.”

I was shocked.

We were in SEVENTH grade and Crystal (the subject of her nasty rant) had actually been MY best friend for years.

The “It girl” sharing her infinite wisdom (insert sarcasm and rolling eyes here) was a cheerleader I’d been trying to get to know for months that I wanted desperately to be accepted by - at least enough to get an invitation to sit with her and her crew at lunch.

I honestly don’t remember what I said in response.

I didn’t pile on. Probably I redirected… but I definitely didn’t tell her to “f*ck right off,” which is what I should have done, or anything else that would make “40-something -year-old me” proud.

I think about that day - literally decades ago - more often than I’d like to admit.

It was the day I sold my soul for a seat in a small plastic chair in a fluorescent lit room with flaking lead paint that smelled of sloppy joes.

Above all it was weak and pathetic.

But that’s just how easy it is to become part of the problem - a ‘mean girl’

And for many women, the lesson isn’t learned and that’s not where it ends.

It wasn’t the first time that I was a part of something sinister propagated against another of my female species, (and it wasn’t the last),

But, over time, I learned.

• I saw the damage that resulted from sl*t-shaming & private stories shared.

• I saw the girls that cried in the bathroom & those who hid to avoid conflict.

• I saw those who became obsessed with dudes because anything was better than more war with their ‘friends.’

And while observing the destruction of my peers was bad enough to spark change, what really made it clear for ‘teenager me’, was seeing how talking sh*t made the sh*t-talker look to everyone else - the It girl was weak.

In that moment I realized that: The weakest, most insecure people are the mean ones.

And I damn sure didn’t want to be weak.

In the 30 years since I learned this lesson, I’ve realized that not everyone is lucky enough to figure this out early on in life.

And like every last woman reading this, I’ve been on the other side of girl-on-girl bullying many times.

The quality & presentation of bullying changes over time, but admittedly in the hallways of our schools, on college campuses, and in the boardrooms of our workplaces, ‘mean girl’ behavior is alive and well.

Toxic behaviors manifest at every stage of life and career & I believe it's fueled by those who try to stifle the growth of others instead of pursuing their own path to personal excellence.

And perhaps it’s time to call out the bullsh*t.

Let’s admit that many people still treat work and life like a “zero-sum game” as if in order for someone else to win, YOU have to lose.

But they’ve got it all wrong.

So much time and energy is spent busy blaming others or society while conniving to hold each other back until there are no resources left to invest in becoming the best versions of ourselves.

And that’s the real point.

What if instead of assigning blame or shaming others we took a moment to question why we are tempted to do anything other than lift others up?

• Is there something about this woman that makes me feel threatened? Do I think she’s prettier? Smarter? Kinder? More capable? Lucky?

• Does sharing her stories in the most negative light possible feed my ego somehow?

• What do I get from others thinking less of her? How does that make me bigger? Prettier? Smarter? Stronger?

I’m sure that there are different questions - better ones, but those are the ones that still come to mind.

Those are the ones that helped me reframe my thinking decades ago when I started looking to change.

The answers were revealing, and showed me what I needed to work on in my own life that would make me freaking unstoppable instead of just angry.

Where we go from here

I never made it right with Crystal. I can't.

But every woman I refuse to tear down now is a debt I'm paying to a 12-year-old who really deserved a friend with a spine (instead of what she actually got). I've never seen the world that music video illustrated - where we lift each other up instead of tearing each other down, but I'm done waiting for someone else to make it. I think it starts with our own self-reflection and open discussion of the mean girl phenomenon.

So let’s start there.