While messages of girl power abound and the party line is that men are the ones out to control us, hurt us, and hold us back in life, the truth is a little more complicated than that. As women, we spend way too much time hating on each other and sometimes actually harming one another, and this girl-on-girl violence HAS to stop.
- We don’t need to compete with each other. Not for a guy’s attention, not for a job, not for more Instagram likes on our beach selfies. Another woman’s win isn’t your loss; there’s enough good stuff in the world to go around to all of us if we’re willing to go out there and work for it.
- There’s no one right way to be a woman. Maybe you’re a tomboy who likes shopping in the men’s section and going to sports games every weekend; maybe you’re a super girly-girl who loves spending hours doing your hair and makeup and never feels more confident than when you’re dressed to the nines. Both things are fine! Womanhood can be enacted in a million different ways, and assuming that your way is the only way isn’t only wrong, it’s totally reductive.
- We don’t have to accept what society teaches us. Society pits women against each other all the time—you see it in the media 24/7. Women are compared, contrasted, praised or totally destroyed based on what we do, what we wear, and even who we’re dating. Because of this, we grow up seeing other women as objects of scorn, as if they’re our enemies. That’s BS and we shouldn’t be reinforcing that. It’s time to break the cycle.
- The world judges us enough—we shouldn’t be judging each other. Again, society, the media, and men of the world judge us all the time for stupid, superficial things, so why are we doing it to each other too? Don’t you want to know that you have allies and teammates who uplift and support you for who you are rather than constantly feeling like you’re being shamed by the entire world?
- It distracts from the real issues. The more we hate on each other, the less we get done. Women are still seen as second-class citizens in many ways and misogyny is as real as ever. While we’re busy screwing over our fellow women and treating each other like crap, more and more injustice is being done against us—and against other marginalized groups of people in the world—and we’re just letting it happen.
- We’re more powerful when we work together. At the end of the day, we need to get rid of girl-on-girl violence and instead of tearing each other down, we need to be uplifting each other. It’s great to be a strong, independent woman, but imagine how much better it’d be if we all got together? Something tells me we could change the world.
