Tripping the Prom Queen: The Truth About Women and Rivalry

by Susan Shapiro Barash

there’s something sweet about a TV show creating an alternate reality in which the feminine Jackie and the feminist Donna manage to coexist without trying to change each other, let alone to destroy each other. (Typically, when other women are involved, Jackie is relentlessly competitive, while Donna is usually confident enough to avoid rivalry.)

I saw the donnas and decided i liked their aloofness. I wanted to be them. Above petty competition cause safe and secure in who i am and what i am

It was never an easy alliance: it took work, and often there were fights and bitter misunderstandings. But precisely for that reason, the show offered a very positive message, which is that friendship is neither a blissful merging nor a treacherous battle. Rather, it’s a dynamic relationship between two unique humans who must always work at communicating and connecting.

But joss remains a pig

the extent to which our culture encourages this battle between girls over boys, looks, popularity, and status,

Teenage girls, knowing how difficult it is to live up to the narrow definition of the “popular” girl—thin, pretty, and perpetually nice—discharge their frustrations in bullying and covert nastiness.

The odd girl out

teenage competitiveness means that we end up viewing ourselves and other women as winners or losers based on what happens early in our lives.

If only someone—parent, teacher, career woman—would break the vicious cycle, we wouldn’t have to cheer for Betty against Veronica. Instead, we could each enjoy a clear sense of our own unique capabilities and options, a sense of self that we could pass on to our daughters. We would finally be able to suit ourselves, to follow not the destiny prescribed by our looks or personality but the destiny we chose for ourselves.

If only my mother hadn’t made me feel an outcast. If only she hadn’t made me feel fat and that my curly hair was hideous.

Women are engaged in a perpetual beauty contest that extends to every aspect of their lives, competing with other women, younger women, even with themselves.

Of the five hundred women I interviewed, nearly 80 percent mentioned competing with other women over physical appearance.

Everywhere we look, a barrage of media images encourages us to compare ourselves not only with each other but with the most beautiful women in the world, women who have made a full-time job of taking care of their skin, their bodies, their teeth.

I look at pictures from twenty years ago, and I can’t stand it. I hate myself today.

women can become “plastic surgery junkies” driven by an obsessive belief that winning the looks competition will somehow gain them the husband, career, or self they desire.

I am a breast cancer survivor. I had a face-lift the year before my surgery and it didn’t hold because my estrogen plummeted. I am not a jealous person, but I felt that my friends who took hormones were doing better and looking years younger than I was. Then the hormone studies came out and I felt almost vindicated.

Vindicated because now her youbger looking friends would be more st tisk of cancer if they kept taking hrt!?!

Baltimore-area pregnant women reported engaging in various types of “weight-restrictive behavior,” including fasts before their doctor’s visits.

Motherhood shoudl require a driving license

I didn’t think about how lucky I was to have these children but about how I looked like a bag of potatoes while my friends looked unbelievable.

women felt that everything they had achieved in their lives somehow depended on their looks, and specifically, on being judged as prettier than other women.

French philosopher Simone de Beauvoir that adolescence is when girls stop being and start seeming. Beauvoir points out that the condition of womanhood in our culture is to appear, to be looked at, to present oneself to the male gaze. I would add that when girls and women struggle to look as men wish them to look, they inevitably end up competing with one another.

I do not want any pretty woman around since I am married…. I believe it is smart to guard what is yours. I have seen so many unhappy endings. I am willing to have pretty, smart women as friends, if only they are attached. If my pretty friend is married, I feel okay. I know that marriage is no guarantee, but it would be overkill to worry about married women. I have to have some semblance of normalcy even when I am feeling threatened and jealous.

If you go for competition you do t know who you are and what you want, just what youre supposed to and will alway watch your back.

I have canceled plans when I have heard that a certain woman will be there, and I have asked the hostess to move us to another table if there is a gorgeous single woman scheduled to sit with us. I have tried to get my husband’s attention when I see a pretty woman walking down the street. I am not exactly proud of this, but I also know that it is necessary.

Why did you marry a man that only chose you for pretty?!? Dont you want to actually be loved?

I could never live in a big city where women are very glamorous. I learned this when I was in graduate school in Chicago and I found it intimidating. There were chic women at every corner, so I live in a small town. In this small place, I am the one who is chic…I am the big deal.

Small pond, big fish? What if the pond is just different not bigger or smaller?

it’s not enough that she avoid jealousy of others. She wants other women to be jealous of her:

I work hard at my reputation and my personal style, and am involved with every local event. I suspect that women are jea...

I have done very well in the corporate world because of how I look. I know that being pretty is a big part of getting somewhere for women. And I know that this applies to work and in interpersonal relationships.

my girlfriends who are heavier and believe that is why they are so miserable, or they just aren’t pretty, really suffer. They hate me instead of trying to lose weight, somehow fixing what is wrong with them. And maybe if this one girlfriend in particular would stop talking about getting her nose fixed and just do it, if she would stop complaining about needing to diet and just lose weight, she would be happier with herself.

I suppose I am unkind about it, because I am spoiled, but there is a premium in our society on being an attractive woman. The higher I have climbed in the corporate ladder, the more it has mattered to me that I am appreciated for my ability. But I always have it mixed in with how I look. I have my own maintenance to consider on a continual basis and then I have this edge on other women, which is what happens when you are the prettier one.

feels the need to win approval from the men who judge her as prettier and reward her accordingly.

she confuse her looks and her worth—

she must also perpetually mistrust the other women who she beli...

I learned early on that I was worth looking at.

fit in with the right crowd because of how I looked, and I could get away with anything…

I never made close women friends in the same field because we were too competitive. I think I disliked being one of many beautiful women, and I didn’t last long as a model. It was only when I was winning that I really enjoyed it.

all these years later, I have women friends because I have gained weight and I am above average but no young beauty. Women are nicer to me, which means that I am no longer anything special to look at. I have begun to look at beautiful women and feel what women must have felt about me at one time. They are the ones who will have it all, because their looks rule. They can win out over any ordinary woman.

How sad she must feel that her froends are so because she thinks shes not a treath. Was she just bice to those she didnt consoder a threat?

she compensated for not being pretty enough by being “witty and clever, having good clothes, good hair.” But in the end, it was by physically altering her features that she felt as though she had leveled the playing field,

I get the first part, thats why fat girls ened to develop a personality, but exactly because of that we wouldnt dare getting out of our lane?

I will always identify with the wallflower, the one who isn’t pretty enough to be invited out on the dance floor. That is who I really am because of how I was as a young girl. I believed that my nose, which was long and bumpy, kept me from being considered pretty. I imagined that girls, then young women, and finally women, would say to each other, “Gee, Jeannette could be so attractive if only she didn’t have that nose.” And I began to wonder if I had to always think that way. It is amazing to me that I could simply pay to look better, that it is within our power, if we just make some money and put it aside for ourselves.

Replace nose with fat

“If I didn’t have a boyfriend,” she cautions, “if I hadn’t had a career, I don’t know how I would be…I might have dyed my hair blond and lost fifty pounds.”

I knew I had to do something when I could no longer look at myself in the light and I hated thin women.

I never hated thin women. They were the norm, they were playong by the rules, it was my dault for being a deformity.

When I had to buy new clothes, my best friend from high school stopped complimenting me. She liked me fat because from the time we were fifteen, she always got the guys. One day I was actually thinner than two women at work.

I havent kwpt friends Cross lives for that long, but the friends i had ehen iblost weight were the ones who knew me fat and they were conplimentary but was still me. Elisa didnt change, anna, lucia, giada actually encouraged me to change clothes size when i was lost in dismorphia denying i shrunk

That was when the male sales reps started talking to me more than they had to. I felt like a new person:…

The harassment i creaswd. Men felt more entirtled to stop me while i was walking, proposition to me while waiting for a bus, ask me when i was outside a pub having a drink or they could come home with me. Whethere it was restong bitch face or resting fat face fat was safer

could look at myself naked in the light! I was okay

Never gor there woth the mirror, but i started to like my pictures cause i flwas finally lookong as graceful as i always thought i was supposed to look

About this time I met my future husband, but my friends were not happy for me.

Same but they were happy and enthusiastic for me, bar one. She avoided meeting then for almost a year. I think she had a crush on them (your eyes are so blue, she told him once, as if i didnt hear) but that made me smile rather than offend. Probably cause i felt safe in my relationship? I woulsnt be with someone i need to bw worried about.

she lost friends as she gained weight, because her friends envied her new comfort with herself:

I didn’t stay thin. My husband never seemed to care, and that… gave me some kind of encouragement.

…I am not ashamed of my appearance at all. I know that women whisper about me, that my weight is unhealthy, that I have such a pretty face if only I’d lose weight. I can sniff out women who are jealous of me because I am okay with who I am…. My mother recently suggested that I lose weight to keep my husband since there are so many pretty, thin single women around. But I doubt that I will, because this

still has not escaped the beauty contest. “Mostly, I feel good about myself,” she concludes, but she can’t resist one final burst of rivalry: “I have only a few lines on my face compared to my thinner contemporaries.”

Guess id say "I'm clever, im special, i got a sparkling mind, raven loves me for me so i dont fear, i dont have to watxh my back". Who would want to be with someone they are not sure of the love of and have to kwep defending and watching their backs for? I want better love tha. Love i need to set a guard dog over

the perpetual beauty contest passes from generation to generation: I think I became competitive with my daughter once she began to look so amazingly sexy and beautiful. I saw myself withering as she flourished.

I look not only at my daughter but at her friends and at the attention they get from men and women alike. I look at their hair, skin, faces, bodies, and I really am envious. I regret my age and the choices I’ve made.

older women don’t compete only with younger women. They also compete with one another.

It was not until my forties that I began to doubt myself because then I was becoming wrinkled. That was different from thinking someone else was prettier or that I wasn’t pretty enough. This was very upsetting, and so I had a face-lift at

I think one of the tricks of aging well is to lighten your hair. But my friends who are also blond by a hairdresser’s wand seem angry that I’ve gone so blond. I can’t believe this—after all, they can do it, too. I’m not stopping them. I don’t own this hair color. I just like it and it makes me feel good, alive and peppy…

Now my friends envy me, more than ever, because not only do I look good but I tell everyone how old I am. That makes them uncomfortable, I guess, because they are not shouting out their age.