Tripping the Prom Queen: The Truth About Women and Rivalry

by Susan Shapiro Barash

I feel like disappearing. Had I lived in another era, it wouldn’t be this painful. But today I have little choice but to take some action. If I don’t, then I’ll be looking like a hag compared to my friends, who have all done something. The worst thing is, I don’t even know what I’m supposed to look like because everyone has had something done already.

“Unfortunately women feel judged more by what is on the outside than the inside. Their identity is wrapped up by the external,”

“For younger women, the successes that older women have achieved, that of mother, wife, and career, can be daunting. The identity of the younger woman, even in her early twenties, is not fully formed. For this reason, younger women can be envious of the older woman’s history, experience, confidence, and wisdom.”

Not envy, looking up

Older women are almost invariably portrayed as washed up, contemptible, or evil. Particularly when they compete against younger, more beautiful rivals, older women are expected to relinquish their triumphs or face a humiliating defeat.

People often confuse physical attributes with job competence, moral virtue, and other desirable qualities. For example, the Hamermesh-Biddle study, “Beauty and the Labor Market,” has shown that someone perceived as attractive in the workforce usually nets a 5–10 percent increase in earnings over the plainer folk.

I like looking young for my age, who wouldn’t? And lately I’ve been dating younger men who I meet at work-related events. That’s refreshing, too, so I’m sort of having this new lease on life. But I’m always worried about my age. And I do wonder how the other women at work would treat me if they knew I was over forty-five. I think they might be more competitive with me then, or they’d push me to the side.

artistic and professional prizes often are awarded to younger, prettier women, suggesting that their beauty somehow enhances their abilities.

Although many classical purists view a female artist’s good looks as somehow making her less serious, there is no doubt that the general public is eager to patronize concerts by attractive performers.

As with all types of female competition, the perpetual beauty contest is fueled by a basic scarcity, what I call the not enough pie syndrome. If there were enough rewards to go around—enough solo violin recitals, good men, high-powered jobs—I believe that female rivalry would be far less sharp. But because women have so little access to the goals they seek, they are forced to compete for a tiny slice of the pie, a situation that cannot help but breed the virulent competitions we have observed.

Zero sun game, there is not enough pie

Not only are we engaged in a perpetual beauty contest that we can never permanently win, we must also convey to the men who desire us that they can never fully have us, even as our beauty is supposed to make us more desirable than ever.

the perpetual beauty contest. By definition, any woman who wins the contest today must expect to lose it—if not tomorrow, then the day after, or the day after that.

In the perpetual beauty contest, victory can bring penalties as great as defeat, for as we become preoccupied with our looks, we grow uncertain about our other attributes. Perhaps we, too, come to value appearance over all other qualities—wisdom, intelligence, skill, kindness. Or maybe we begin to doubt whether any other attribute we have is visible, or even whether it exists at all.

Women seem to pay a price both for losing the contest and for (temporarily) taking home the prize.

in agreeing to the terms of the perpetual beauty contest, we are ensuring our own destiny of being forever judged and found wanting.

vie

Nowhere does female rivalry come to the surface more sharply than when two women are competing over the same guy.

But to think that Denise and I were like sisters, and now she was trying to take my guy was too much.

Why wouldnit matter if she tried? Sit her down but really, you should feel safe with him no matter the advances and flirting, is he with you? Hell take care of saying no. No?

I told my boyfriend that I saw what was going on. He agreed that she was coming on to him. I asked him who he wanted and he said me. “I don’t talk to Denise,” he told me. “Let her go find her own man and not take somebody else’s.”

I was never the prettiest, or the smartest, but I knew how to get what I wanted.

Why the need to prove yourself girl? Prove what?

I did it because I couldn’t stand that she had him and that she looked the way she did, which was why she had him. So I had to get her guy to ruin her and also to prove that I was worthy of the same guy as Eileen.

I realized I’d lost a girlfriend who had been a good friend, but that wasn’t what bothered me the most. What bothered me most was that she was right: Ben was boring and a lousy kisser. She had said all that to me and I had ignored it, but she was right. Eileen, my best friend from kindergarten to ninth grade, never spoke to me again. Not that this stopped me.

how much more interested she seems to be in winning the competition with her women friends than in actually getting the guy. Her first rivalry, with her friend Eileen, was focused on her envy of Eileen’s looks and her need to prove herself as Eileen’s equal.

Revenge against Eileen, and clear superiority to her, was far more important. Her subsequent relationships all seem to be as much symbols of triumph over a woman friend as they are about fulfilling relationships with a male partner.

I stooped as low as my ex-husband’s new wife had, and broke up someone’s marriage in order to land the man.

She had these gorgeous legs and displayed them to perfection. A week later, Roger’s secretary, who is loyal to me, said that this woman called at the office. That was it. I called her and told her to stay away. I probably even threatened her. I told Roger that if he ever spoke to this woman again, I would be gone.

If you are married to someone you cant trust, you married wrong.

scorned wives often focus on the wives-to-be. “These women think they will feel better if they lunge after the new women.

was, in fact, the whole point—the women also knew that looking mean, catty, or unkind would cost them points with viewers.

Both the movies and the TV show are dramatic illustrations of how women’s competition over relationships brings women closer together even as it keeps them permanently apart. Any athlete will tell you that you are much closer to your competitors than to anyone else—they are the ones against whom you measure yourself, and only they can truly understand you. Yet since we women are not allowed to compete openly and are rarely praised for our competitive natures—not even in an open contest like The Bachelor—we have difficulty dropping the rivalry when it no longer serves us.

Rage becomes her / odd girl out

I felt lousy that day, knowing I had less than she did and that her life was an improvement over mine.

Then we were on an even playing field because we both were single for a long period of time. In the end she won this round, too, and I admit, I had trouble dealing with it.

Had she felt more empowered in her own life, she might not have felt so envious in the first place.

female jealousy connects to a woman’s sense of being unable to meet the wide variety of demands she currently faces. This stresses how women can be envious on all levels, because of the hardships and frustration that they encounter in every domain. Ironically, the very gains of feminism have created pressure on women to “have it all,” a pressure that fosters female rivalry even as it promotes the myth of female friendship. “Women struggle to balance a marriage, children, and career,” he says. “Some do better at it than others, and they are envied by those who feel inadequate. This can affect their friends and even their sisters.”

women suggested that the need to steal another woman’s man was motivated not only by desire for the man, but also—and maybe more urgently—by envy of a particular woman. It’s almost as though we think stealing that woman’s man will make us resemble that woman.

The man himself is less important than the possibility he offers, that of making us the envied woman’s equal, of becoming as powerful and wonderful as she is.

the tale haunts us with its suggestion that taking something from a powerful figure, whether handkerchief or prince, seems to empower us to have a better life of our own.

endow

certain that any man will prefer Ellen over her.

I never quite worried about this. I was never the pretriest but i knew i was unique, the sparkling mind and all that. I told myself of course people,.men coulsnt like me at firtinsight, and that was a good thing, it was a natural selectionand just deep, profound, intelligent people would be interested in me, cause to see how special i was took more than looks on their side too.

…I have been this way with other female friends since that episode. I believe that one can’t be too careful. I know that I operate in a rather paranoid world, where another woman seems empowered to destroy my chances of success with a guy, and so I preempt the situation.

The issue is your pwn judgement of yourselt. To your own standard you dont measure up, if you did youd feel comfortable being liked or not liked because you yourself are ok with whom you are which means being ok with giving peoplw the chance to like you or not, cause their appreciation won't be a judgement of your success, that success is how you live up to your own standard.

She believes that another woman’s beauty or sex appeal has such magical power that even on her wedding day, it could destroy her husband’s feelings for her, instantly creating an attraction to another woman that supersedes his commitment to Alice. It seems to me that Alice lives in a frightening fairy-tale world in which other females have a kind of magic talisman, enabling them to sneak into Alice’s territory and steal her most precious possession.

In Luce’s world, women had access to few professional jobs or independent sources of income, and men were indeed the key to women’s power. Stealing a man might therefore seem as good a route to upward mobility as any other.

“Envy is both social and intrapsychic…To the extent that a woman feels she lacks agency and power, she envies anyone whom she imagines has these.” And, to the extent that agency and power seem available through a man, it’s a logical next step to try to attain another woman’s power by taking her man.

Emvy never knows the full story. She imagines

she envies not her friends’ relationships but rather the lifestyles that these relationships seem to enable:

kowtow

I just wish I had their wardrobes and cars; some of them have nice houses and cleaning help. I resent that Rick can’t do it for me and that their husbands can. No one works full-time in this group, so it really is about the husbands and how they do.

husband and marriage seem less important to her friends than the material advantages that her relationship brings.

husband, “Why does Cecily have all this? It’s making me sick that she has this, and I have less now. She’s outdone me.”…To me this friend had everything, and I thought she would be happy for me. Then the next week she heard that I was hired to cater the biggest affair in our town. She actually called to complain to me about my success and about my house.

My mother was shittalked when she was 14 by an older women. Allegedly this older woman went to the family of this french guy who was visiting in the village basically telling them their son could do better, implying i guess my mother was a bad girl of some kind.

she was getting a divorce from Jim, her husband of nine years, and I knew I wanted one, too.

She confided in me that she was having an affair. That was when I first felt envious…. Her affair sounded like a great escape… a way to get through a marriage.

I was envious of Lori during my divorce because she was one step ahead.

Then I finally was divorced, but I didn’t do as well as Lori