That Was No Accident
The sheer ruthlessness of female competition is beyond male comprehension
What’s fascinating about female competition is not only how brutal it is, but the way in which many of the competitors don’t even realize that they’re in a competition, much less that they’re being played.
In a scenario that tends to support the science, a Sigma Game subscriber shares her personal experience with another girl who successfully reduced her attractiveness by “accidentally” chopping her hair off.
I had long hair in junior high and my cousin said a piece in the back was longer and needed a trim and that she could just snip it off. So I let her and she ended up cutting two big chunks off, and to make it even, led to it all being shoulder-length. It was actually devastating.
So I never fell for the "just get the edgy, no-hassle, short-hair cut". I don’t think it was a jealousy thing, but could never figure out why she did that. Ironically, or maybe as penance, she has cut her hair in this short, spiky, grandma-ish pouf since about 30, and I cannot even fake a compliment. Even my son asked why she does that, like it was self-mutilation.
That was no accident. It was less a jealousy thing, than it was a competitive thing. Notice how the cousin invents a non-existent problem, offers a solution, then somehow makes it even worse, therefore requiring a second solution that results in the butchering of the female rival’s hair.
As for the cousin’s decision to shear her own locks, it’s not penance. As even a child can tell, it’s a form of self-mutilation based on the same negative impulse that drives people to cover themselves with ink, pile on the pounds, or surgically modify themselves in obviously unattractive ways. Some women simply can’t bear the reality of discovering they are relatively uncompetitive in the sexual market, so they choose to make statements that imply they don’t care and are not even trying to compete, even if their subsequent actions to drag others down toward their level tend to demonstrate otherwise.
In general, a woman is as ill-advised to take stylistic advice from another woman as an Alpha executive is to take business advice from a Gamma working in the IT department. Because the advice received is reliably going to be a) self-serving in some way, b) based on false assumptions, and, c) injurious to the individual foolish enough to take it.
When my daughter was a toddler, my wife and I went on vacation for a few days and left her with my mother. Unbeknownst to us, my mother decided my daughter's hair was "too messy" and cut it without asking us first. We arrived home to find our beautiful baby girl with a bowl haircut. My wife, needless to say, went ballistic; I was barely able to contain Fists of Fury. I told my mother that it was high time we get her to the airport, and by the way, don't plan on watching our kids ever again. She acted like she didn't know she had done anything wrong, dropping chestnuts like "you never told me not to cut her hair blah blah blah".
I submit this anecdote for commentary and analysis here, because I'd love to share this group's thoughts with my wife, who still fumes about it 20 years later (as she should).
One note of context: she did everything she possibly could to raise my brother and I as Gammas. Both he and I knew something was wrong, but obviously we were too young to know exactly what. I will leave to others to judge how well she did.
Had a family discussion about this. A few things came up:
1) Mean Girls resonates for a reason. It's the classic queen bee holding power with her flying monkeys.
2) In Little Women, Jo March burns off her beautiful older sister's hair accidentally before a ball. Jo's "one beauty" is her hair.
3) The competition requires stealth for plausible deniability. One doesn't want to be outed as mean or sabotaging as the Glenn Close character was in the end of Dangerous Liaisons because that would be social ruin.
4) It doesn't ever end. 1939's The Women is all about married women socialites jockeying for dominant position. However, the one most people are familiar with is the classic mother- in- law. Left handed "complements" and "help/advice" that is mean and undermining for the wife. Marie Barone is the classic TV example.
5) Apparently I forgot one. Matron sabotage on behalf of progeny against rivals, eg Cinderella.
I doubt men notice much of these things, but in modern society it is just as critical to understand these dynamics as the male SSH, because we in the west are more than 50% women in University, in many professions and rapidly equalizing in all other areas. Unless; as the author of this Substack has pointed out: you want your a$$ (or hair) handed to you by surprise, it is better to be aware of these dynamics and nip things in the bud.