A lot of truth to this one. Women, as a general rule, are at LEAST as competitive as men. and as hostile too, they just express it differently so its sometimes less obvious if you don't know what to look for.
Speaking of business advice. Is it best to adopt a complementary status to a customer seeking a bid on a project? E.g if he's an alpha, adopt bravo characteristics?
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.
I watched a “nice” female sort through girls-night-out pictures to post the very best of herself and very worst of her friends. Competition and sabotage across the board.
A side note to this story. We had another cousin that was ultra beautiful & I feel like my scissor-hand cousin would not have even attempted to do this to the beauty queen cousin -- are some hills too high to climb / resistance is futile ? Or maybe she would've, obviously my judgement was off. Whatever the case its a valuable friendship screening tool that I acquired at an early age (the hard way)
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.
I mentioned this female competitive tendency to a girlfriend in the past and she proceeded to tell me that when her "best friend" has shorter hair than she does, her friend always suggests for varying alleged reasons that she cut hers too. At one time her friend had gotten her own hair cut noticeably shorter than her and commented that she also needed a trim to keep her hair healthy, even offering to cut it for her despite having no experience whatsoever.
My girlfriend immediately said no, apparently aware of the pattern and that it was for ulterior reasons. She has long, beautiful hair that reaches to her lower back. No one is cutting her hair anytime soon.
Less pretty women who know they are loved needn't stoop to this sort of pettiness. The plainest girl in my high school class came from a remarkably non-dysfunctional churchgoing family; she was intelligent, pleasant, had a sense of humor, was a devout Christian, and as she said while showing off her nice big diamond, "I was a good girl." She married a hardworking fellow and had a houseful of tall kids and has been quite happy as far as I can tell. Luckily, though, she's not a beautician. The mean girl thing is real: A month before I met my husband, I'd gotten the worst haircut of my entire life. She chopped if off, dyed it orange, and turned it into frizz. I've never trusted "beauty shops" since.
Males don't engage in behavior like this. Sabatoge and undermining like this in adolescent males is a sign of a mental condition or lack of proper upbringing coupled with that.
It's impossible to truly understand because it isn't in our nature.
Unless they're a gamma (said for the lulz. Btfo gammas)
A lot of truth to this one. Women, as a general rule, are at LEAST as competitive as men. and as hostile too, they just express it differently so its sometimes less obvious if you don't know what to look for.
I have learned not to befriend women who encourage me to cut my long hair short.
Speaking of business advice. Is it best to adopt a complementary status to a customer seeking a bid on a project? E.g if he's an alpha, adopt bravo characteristics?
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.
I watched a “nice” female sort through girls-night-out pictures to post the very best of herself and very worst of her friends. Competition and sabotage across the board.
A side note to this story. We had another cousin that was ultra beautiful & I feel like my scissor-hand cousin would not have even attempted to do this to the beauty queen cousin -- are some hills too high to climb / resistance is futile ? Or maybe she would've, obviously my judgement was off. Whatever the case its a valuable friendship screening tool that I acquired at an early age (the hard way)
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.
I mentioned this female competitive tendency to a girlfriend in the past and she proceeded to tell me that when her "best friend" has shorter hair than she does, her friend always suggests for varying alleged reasons that she cut hers too. At one time her friend had gotten her own hair cut noticeably shorter than her and commented that she also needed a trim to keep her hair healthy, even offering to cut it for her despite having no experience whatsoever.
My girlfriend immediately said no, apparently aware of the pattern and that it was for ulterior reasons. She has long, beautiful hair that reaches to her lower back. No one is cutting her hair anytime soon.
Less pretty women who know they are loved needn't stoop to this sort of pettiness. The plainest girl in my high school class came from a remarkably non-dysfunctional churchgoing family; she was intelligent, pleasant, had a sense of humor, was a devout Christian, and as she said while showing off her nice big diamond, "I was a good girl." She married a hardworking fellow and had a houseful of tall kids and has been quite happy as far as I can tell. Luckily, though, she's not a beautician. The mean girl thing is real: A month before I met my husband, I'd gotten the worst haircut of my entire life. She chopped if off, dyed it orange, and turned it into frizz. I've never trusted "beauty shops" since.
"The sheer ruthlessness of female competition is beyond male comprehension"
As the level/strength of the male sex drive is incomprehensible to women.
"so they choose to make statements that imply they don’t care"
Empowering.
but against what?
The competition.
Males don't engage in behavior like this. Sabatoge and undermining like this in adolescent males is a sign of a mental condition or lack of proper upbringing coupled with that.
It's impossible to truly understand because it isn't in our nature.
Unless they're a gamma (said for the lulz. Btfo gammas)