Raise your hand if you’ve been personally victimized by Regina George. No? OK then, ladies, raise your hand if you’ve ever been personally victimized by any other girl.
Chances are, a lot of you probably mentally raised your hands. Girl hate — you know, that feeling that you get when you inexplicably hate another girl “just because” — is extremely common.
It’s common enough that I got my most recent taste of it last week when I danced with someone’s ex-boyfriend. She first talked to him about it, and then she turned to me.
Here’s what she said, except with a not-so-nice word replaced here with “kitten”: “You need to back the kitten off!” In that moment, I thought I was about to be slapped.
Good news: She didn’t slap me. I went on to explain how I didn’t want to do anything wrong and how I was all for girls supporting girls. At the end of the night, she apologized and told me the same.
But her first outburst isn’t really anything out of the ordinary. The phenomenon of girl hate is ingrained into how we are raised and taught to treat other humans.
It’s probably been happening since cave-lady Susie called cave-lady Angelina a slut for wearing too short of an animal pelt.
But despite how often this happens, I’ll never understand why. Ladies, why can’t you just support your fellow ladies instead of putting them down?
There’s a foundation for why girl hate occurs, but you’re not going to like the answer. Our society is founded on patriarchal beliefs that basically teach women that being a woman is the worst thing possible.
Girls are trained to put down other girls in order to elevate their own status and gain more attention.
There are outside factors that contribute to this too. Oftentimes, comments from men pit women against each other.
If you tell me, “You’re so cool, not at all like other girls,” you’re entering me into a competition against other women against my will. You’re totally right — I am really cool! But so are other girls, too.
There are a lot of commonly used phrases that subtly put down fellow ladies. If you say things like, “I’m not like other girls, I like books and video games, not shopping and makeup,” then you’re part of the problem.
Comments like that stereotype women and insinuate that you’re better than them. They often also value stereotypically “manly” activities more than feminine activities — which is basically saying that boys rule and girls drool.
I get it, the stereotypes against women suck. We’re supposedly superficial, stuck-up and catty. When you say that you’re not like “other women,” it means you agree with the stereotypes and don’t want to align yourself with your fellow ladies.
Saying, “I only hang out with boys because girls suck and have too much drama,” is problematic, too. Girls are really cool and fun and awesome.
Have you hung out with boys? Not as cool and fun and awesome. And have you seen boys fight? They’re just as likely to have drama as girls are.
Even just small comments that you might make can be girl hate. This especially happens with girls you barely know — “Do you see her talking to that guy? What a slut!” — as a form of reassuring yourself that you’re better than she is.
An article from Rookie explained it nicely with, “Girl hate is not hating someone who happens to be a girl, it’s hating someone because we’re told that, as girls, we should hate other girls who are as awesome as or more awesome than ourselves.”
If you’re reading this and panicking, thinking, “OMG, I never realized I was such a jerk!” then don’t worry. You’re not a jerk: You’ve just internalized a huge problem that society has as a whole.
Unfortunately, there’s not an overnight fix. You’ll probably slip up. After all, you’re trying to get rid of learned behaviors that you’ve had for two decades.
There are a few things that you can do to make this world a better place for ladies, though. Stop looking for their flaws. Stop calling girls nasty names. Smile at people. Give them compliments. In general: Just be a nice person.
If you can’t take my word for it, take the only good thing to come out of girl hate: “Mean Girls.” Ms. Norbury gave great advice when she said, “You all have got to stop calling each other sluts and whores. It just makes it OK for guys to call you sluts and whores.”
Girls have a rough time already, and putting your lady friends down just makes men think it’s OK for them to do it too.
Abandon girl hate, y’all, and support girl love.
Robyn Smith is a UF journalism junior. Her columns appear on Fridays.
[A version of this story ran on page 7 on 11/7/2014]
