Posted on 03/06/2006 9:51:00 PM PST by tbird5
It happens to the best of women. Here's Rosalind Wiseman, who has spent her entire working life teaching girls to treat each other decently. The script for the movie Mean Girls was based on her 2002 best-selling Queen Bees & Wannabes, a book that helps parents understand the drama and danger in the adolescent girl world. She knows the minefields that lie in gossip, jealousy, disloyalty and cruel judgments, and offers solid prescriptions for changing bad behaviour.
Yet despite her experience, she recently found herself sizing up two mothers who came to see her.
In her view, the women paid too much attention to their appearance, especially their hair. They seemed catty in their conversation, were micromanaging their kids' lives, and were silly.
"All these things came into my head. Why? They are antithetical to what I teach and believe," Wiseman says. "I was still judging these women."
Where does this nastiness come from?
Wiseman thinks it exists because it's supposed to exist. Being nasty to each other is one of the unspoken rules about how girls and women are supposed to behave; one of the rigidly enforced North American standards of what constitutes femininity.
"It's everything you know but haven't been sat down and taught," as Wiseman puts it.
When she judged the two women so harshly, it was as if she was acting out one of the observations she made in her book — that girls and women can be their own worst enemies.
(Excerpt) Read more at thestar.com ...
Not all women are catty. I loathe those types of women, as I know you do.
A male friend of mine said recently that women carry too much "baggage" around. Okay, probably true of many, but not all of us. I personally don't blame one guy, for the f*ck ups of another. I don't know why they always assume that.
I think it is true that a lot of women, myself being one of them, have very few really close female friends, mostly because I am very picky and weed out the superficial ones. But the ones I do have, like many of you gals here, are the real deal.
(Busted! ;-) )
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I hate working with women is that they take such things personally
hmmm, didn't you just insinuate that you weren't like what Clemenza was describing about his own personally experience?
Only if you give me the chance. LOL.
Do we have to go over this again???????? You are on FR, most of these comments don't apply to you.
Whoa...you took that much more deeply than I meant it!
I was just trying to make a distinction between strong and mean.
Funny story though!
Good post!
Small story--I've worked around a lot of women, and when I went to build my home I thought, "Guy stuff. Construction, carptenters, contractors." I had it in mind that this would be ONE experience without PMS or menopause moodiness in "coworkers"--in this case, guys who would be working for me and with me.
The whining. The b*tching. The complaining. The pouting. The snippiness and fussiness--every time one guy would finish, the next guy would be all offended about some sawdust. Was I disillusioned.
While in general I'd rather work for a guy than a gal--there is a lot of male PMS out here.
Exactly, strong and mean, are two very different things.
Then don't generalize.
LOL! Awesome! Oh no, the hubby and I are getting ready to build our own home, and I will be doing most of the leg work. Is this what I have to look forward too?!
The only reason men resent women's baggage is they don't want to make room for it in their own U-hauls of past angst.
And just what do you mean by that?
;^>
LOL!
I am generalizing, its just that you probably don't fit in the mainstream of the generalization. You are probably on the outer fringe of good ones. lol.
Ok, ladies, I happen to work with a man who is such a biddie, he should be wearing a hairnet!
You wouldn't happen to be single, would you?
Nah,
I just kill mine off :)
One little thing about building your own--remember all those houses you've lived in with little inconvenient corners that bespoke some stupid planning? It's really terrible when it's yourself you have to blame...
Is that why you don't let anyone near your freezer?
;-)
Perfectly put sister! I told him that I don't look at baggage as a bad thing, it's just an inevtable part of life. It will only affect a relationship as much as one allows it to.
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