An acquaintance of mine told me about some trouble she was having with her best friend. Seems the best friend has a new boyfriend and is neglecting her other friends.
I told her that she is in a delicate situation. On the one hand she doesn’t want to sound like a jealous twit, but she is. More on that later. On the other hand, she has to be honest with her friend and tell her how she’s feeling. My question to her was if your friend can make time for her boyfriend and his friends, why can’t she make time for you? What’s stopping her?
A couple of days later, I run into her again. She is no longer talking to her friend. She told her friend how neglected she was feeling and that she resented the fact that her friend could make time for her boyfriend’s friends but not for her own best friend. The friend accused her of being jealous and trying to sabotage her relationship.
At the end of her story, she broke down. Understanding how shitty she must be feeling, I offered to buy her a drink. We sat and talked for awhile and during our conversation I had an epiphany.
I find it startling how easily women drop their girlfriends when they start dating. It’s almost as if their minds shut off when they spread their legs. We’re all pissed off when someone’s out dating and what happens when it all falls apart? We open our arms and welcome them back to the fold, hiding our sneers and snickers behind our hands as we wipe away our sisters’ tears. How fucked is that?
We are kept separated from each other by the media’s constant bombardment of images of what we should look like. We view other women as competition, instead of treating them as beautiful in their own right. It is a fucked up world indeed when women can’t get over their own insecurities and help each other fight against the discrimination that occurs each day. We are too busy trying to find the right shade of lipstick that we miss helping our girlfriend through rough marriages. Instead of lending each other our support and fighting side by side for equal rights and the right to our own bodies, we try and make sure no one else gets any closer to achieving what we think is the ultimate goal.
The media has told us over and over that in order to succeed we must be young, beautiful and sexy. Who decides what is beautiful? It certainly isn’t women; we find beauty in all stages of life. This idea has now filtered down to our daughters, this sick twisted version of what being a woman should be according to men and the media. It’s up to us, as mature, confident women to show them the truth. We have to show them that what’s being offered to them isn’t real, it’s something meant to pacify them and cow them into being "proper" women.
So the next time you’re tempted to make some snide comment about a woman on the street just remember who’s putting those words into your mouth. Take back your power and be a real woman.

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