“I’m only friends with guys because I hate drama.”
You’ve heard it before, and if you’re in your right mind, you should have gagged when you heard the sentence. But only because you realized that women have been raised to believe and say these types of things since the very beginning. Women out there truly believe that it’s too much effort to be friends with other women.
I remember working in a preschool the first time that I saw it. The girls were only three or four years old, way too young to understand the effects of their words, when they told one of the other little girls that they wouldn’t play with her because she was weird and she talked too loud. For some reason, this always stuck with me. I wondered if this was the job of an innate nature within all women, or if somewhere along the line, the girls had picked up on the hatred that they must have towards other girls.
When I considered it, I realized I couldn’t remember a time that I hadn’t been pitted against another girl. I was raised, as all girls are, to see others as competition. If you think about it, imagine what a different, amazing world it would be if women saw each other’s successes as inspiration and not another hurdle to throw down and climb over.
There’s a real power when it comes to caring about other women, and seeing their strengths and graciousness as something that you want to emulate. It’s about looking to other women and saying, “I want you to be a strong, independent person and become the best version of yourself that you can be.” It’s easy to see another woman and be jealous or judgmental, but it takes a smart, kind and generous person to realize the amazing qualities in her.
