as i've mentioned before, i'm a guy's girl. growing up, most of my closest friends were guys. my best friends were usually girls, but my larger group of friends are dudes. i'm not really clear on when and how this happened, but as a child i was really tight with my father while my mother played the disciplinarian, "i'm your mother not your friend" role. from that, i guess i generally wanted to mirror the bond i had with my father.
forcing relationships with girls was inevitable though. my mother felt more comfortable with me being friends with girls, which is ironic because she claimed to have hated girls in high school. and everything you did in formal school was split between the sexes. but, that just made it that more obvious to me why my friendships with men were "easier". i experienced first-hand the difference between the catty competition amongst the girls and the easy going tough love amongst the boys. and, because i didn't play their game, the girls would try to shut me out a lot of times. that was cool with me though; i always got the last laugh when a girl who bad mouthed me one month would play nice with me the next month when she was trying to hook up with one of my homies. ha! i kinda hate women.
i'm going to go ahead and say that most women hate women. not necessarily hate and not necessarily all women, but... in general, most women don't like the characteristics that are connoted with being a female and the fact that sometimes they are group in with the masses. i can easily say that i hate women because we are generally perceived to be blindingly emotional and catty to no end. my best friend Adam, when talking about women and relationships, will always start out a statement saying, "y'all women kill me because..." a statement which he will quickly amend by saying, "i don't mean you Sarah, because you're different". BUT, for a split second, i am "y'all women" and it burns me up.
anywho, watching the Real Housewives of Atlanta Reunion last night helped me to really understand the dynamics of female relationships. some women really don't go for that bullshit, while others say they don't when their actions admit that they might thrive in it. also, there seems to always be the alpha female. the one who everyone either loves or loves to hate. women, i see, tend to belong to four categories.
women who hate women and hang with women
see Phaedra. these are the worst types, if you ask me. and i know you know more than a few. check your Facebook feed/Twitter timeline. these are the type of chicks who, from Thursday-Sunday, are claiming that they are hanging with their gurrrls at happy hour/the club/brunch, call them their bitches or "ride or die chicks". but, from Monday-Wednesday, those same women will have statuses along the lines of "i hate bitter drama filled chicks! keep my name out your mouth and i better not catch you staring at me in church service! Lord help me!" yeah, that happens. they love the drama that comes along with being a woman and seem to thrive in it. and they hang with women just like them in order to keep up this vicious cycle.
women who hate women and hang with men
see Kim. this one you have to be cognizant of... the woman who shuns women in favor of male relationships as a ploy. this is kinda the type of woman you mother warned you of. she seems to have no close relationships with other women mostly because she has no girl code. this is not always true, of course, but even i can't go without at least one female friend, because who are you going to complain to about your man?? certainly not another dude... cause either he won't really care (ahem, Adam, cough) or he will see it as a very real chance to slide in an open slot... so to speak. no girl can go through that, unless it's a part of her set up.
women who hate women and hang with women who hate women
see Kandi, Sheree, and NeNe, only less crazy.. these are women who generally accept that they have to deal with women because they have the body parts that classify them as so. i tend to fall in this category. like NeNe, i would say that i only have a couple of really close female friends. and i'm cool with that, because my close female friends are like me. they think women as a whole are batshit crazy and would rather limit their interactions. i'm in a sorority, but i have to admit that i'm in one that offered the lowest probability of drama. most of the women were like me, easy going and cool. but, when the drama pops up, as it inevitably will, we don't hesitate to cut it off at the knees. i remember when i first started undergrad, at a women's college ironically, i rolled with a large group of female "friends". by the end of the year... there were just three still standing amongst the ranks of friend. at a women's college, you find out quick whose all about the drama, whose a chronic liar, and who is batshit, whatthefuck crazy.
women who find solace in female relationships
see Cynthia. these poor things. they see rainbows and butterflies when really there are some snakes in the grass. their only hope is to somehow find another girl just like them. my bff Tiffany was like this when we first met. she was sooo sweet that sometimes i couldn't talk to her when i needed that tough love. but, now after 8 years of friendship, she can give it to me straight no chaser. but, then i see the other types of female friends she has and am glad that she has someone to skip with when i don't have to resolve to do so.
one thing i will say is this... going to a women's college has been a real eye opening experience. you really learn about the complexity of the female spirit. this is why i do keep a few female friends, because we are a special and resilient breed. we go through a lot because we are women but are expected to never complain like a woman. i love being a woman for this very reason, although it's extremely taxing. and, the older i get, the more i understand my own mother. as we forge a closer friendship together, i'm really getting to know what a spectacular and haunted character she is. i'm getting to know that we have a lot in common, much more so than the fact that we both hated girls in high school.
forcing relationships with girls was inevitable though. my mother felt more comfortable with me being friends with girls, which is ironic because she claimed to have hated girls in high school. and everything you did in formal school was split between the sexes. but, that just made it that more obvious to me why my friendships with men were "easier". i experienced first-hand the difference between the catty competition amongst the girls and the easy going tough love amongst the boys. and, because i didn't play their game, the girls would try to shut me out a lot of times. that was cool with me though; i always got the last laugh when a girl who bad mouthed me one month would play nice with me the next month when she was trying to hook up with one of my homies. ha! i kinda hate women.
yeah, that happened. only, i didn't play basketball and i had better hair.
i'm going to go ahead and say that most women hate women. not necessarily hate and not necessarily all women, but... in general, most women don't like the characteristics that are connoted with being a female and the fact that sometimes they are group in with the masses. i can easily say that i hate women because we are generally perceived to be blindingly emotional and catty to no end. my best friend Adam, when talking about women and relationships, will always start out a statement saying, "y'all women kill me because..." a statement which he will quickly amend by saying, "i don't mean you Sarah, because you're different". BUT, for a split second, i am "y'all women" and it burns me up.
women who hate women and hang with women
see Phaedra. these are the worst types, if you ask me. and i know you know more than a few. check your Facebook feed/Twitter timeline. these are the type of chicks who, from Thursday-Sunday, are claiming that they are hanging with their gurrrls at happy hour/the club/brunch, call them their bitches or "ride or die chicks". but, from Monday-Wednesday, those same women will have statuses along the lines of "i hate bitter drama filled chicks! keep my name out your mouth and i better not catch you staring at me in church service! Lord help me!" yeah, that happens. they love the drama that comes along with being a woman and seem to thrive in it. and they hang with women just like them in order to keep up this vicious cycle.
women who hate women and hang with men
see Kim. this one you have to be cognizant of... the woman who shuns women in favor of male relationships as a ploy. this is kinda the type of woman you mother warned you of. she seems to have no close relationships with other women mostly because she has no girl code. this is not always true, of course, but even i can't go without at least one female friend, because who are you going to complain to about your man?? certainly not another dude... cause either he won't really care (ahem, Adam, cough) or he will see it as a very real chance to slide in an open slot... so to speak. no girl can go through that, unless it's a part of her set up.
women who hate women and hang with women who hate women
see Kandi, Sheree, and NeNe, only less crazy.. these are women who generally accept that they have to deal with women because they have the body parts that classify them as so. i tend to fall in this category. like NeNe, i would say that i only have a couple of really close female friends. and i'm cool with that, because my close female friends are like me. they think women as a whole are batshit crazy and would rather limit their interactions. i'm in a sorority, but i have to admit that i'm in one that offered the lowest probability of drama. most of the women were like me, easy going and cool. but, when the drama pops up, as it inevitably will, we don't hesitate to cut it off at the knees. i remember when i first started undergrad, at a women's college ironically, i rolled with a large group of female "friends". by the end of the year... there were just three still standing amongst the ranks of friend. at a women's college, you find out quick whose all about the drama, whose a chronic liar, and who is batshit, whatthefuck crazy.
women who find solace in female relationships
see Cynthia. these poor things. they see rainbows and butterflies when really there are some snakes in the grass. their only hope is to somehow find another girl just like them. my bff Tiffany was like this when we first met. she was sooo sweet that sometimes i couldn't talk to her when i needed that tough love. but, now after 8 years of friendship, she can give it to me straight no chaser. but, then i see the other types of female friends she has and am glad that she has someone to skip with when i don't have to resolve to do so.
one thing i will say is this... going to a women's college has been a real eye opening experience. you really learn about the complexity of the female spirit. this is why i do keep a few female friends, because we are a special and resilient breed. we go through a lot because we are women but are expected to never complain like a woman. i love being a woman for this very reason, although it's extremely taxing. and, the older i get, the more i understand my own mother. as we forge a closer friendship together, i'm really getting to know what a spectacular and haunted character she is. i'm getting to know that we have a lot in common, much more so than the fact that we both hated girls in high school.
