I used to have a tougher time meeting women than men. I'm not sure why. When meeting a woman I could hear the sound of my voice getting higher and more saccharin; I'd feel compelled to shrink a bit. Men, on the other hand, tend to "pump up" upon meeting someone else with a Y chromosome. They stand taller, deepen their voices, and their handshakes seem like brief arm-wrestling matches. No man would greet another man with a limp handshake.
First-time meetings always flowed better with men, and not always because they were potential date material. Men are somewhat in awe of women; you feel a headiness, a power around them that you can play to the hilt. Around women, however, this power is seen as offensive--like wearing lingerie to your gynie appointment, like overkill. These people know the deal, that you have fat days, that you get gas, that you weren't born smelling like Chanel.
When I was a teenager other girls irritated me. They always wanted to travel in packs, "Come to the bathroom with me," "What are you wearing tonight?...You can't wear that--that's what I'm wearing!"
I even irritated myself with my girliness; I loved to be tortured by boys, unable to get over the cheating ones. But my twin sister, very much a masculine presence, insisted that I stop embarassing myself over some guy. She would later learn how easy it was to become a stupid girl for the affection of a boy.
We traveled together recently and reminisced about the "men" of our past. As she retold her stories of thwarted or misdirected love I shook my head spastically and shooed her words away, hoping to redirect the memories of how pathetically I reacted to boys. The mean ones I craved; the nice ones embarassed me with their admissions of adoration.
The book Reviving Ophelia helped me to remember how tough it was being a girl who was aware of and proud of her individuality. Author Mary Pipher says that at some point in their early adolescence, around age 12, girls are confronted with the challenge of fitting in. A lucky few assimilate while maintaining their unique talents, connection to their family, and sense of self. Most give up something. Most never regain all, or any, of themselves.
At age 12 I had no problems fitting in, but I stopped playing sports and hanging around with a close-knit group of girls who had known me since Brownies. My new friends were far less loyal, but loyalty wasn't in the top five qualities I wanted in a friend. They had clothes to borrow, liked boys, boys liked them back, and, in some cases, they had little parental supervision and lots of drama about them.
My sister and I hung out with a group of girls who turned against us because we supposedly told a boy which of them had started menstruating (the junior high equivalent of social suicide). The situation almost came to blows, but, as I mention in the first part of this series, girls rarely follow through on their threats to kick another girl's ass, but threaten they must. One of them spoke for the group, announcing the real heinous wrongdoing my sister and I had committed.
"You two try to stick out too much," she said. I apologized profusely for this, but Julie, my sister, kicked me in the shin.
"Too bad," she said. She was livid that these girls told lies about us to keep us in line.
In the end, we all made up; the other girls had no choice. This was one of the first instances of a principle I would learn and then immediately forget: When females stand up for themselves, other females have no recourse. They're like vampires in sunlight; they lose their bite.
In college I entered a sorority and found my unique niche--being a smartass. I learned that I didn't need to be the skinniest or prettiest in the group to be valued. I left college with high hopes; I assumed that in the corporate world there were no frat boys to fight over, nobody asking me if they looked fat.
Yet there were problems; ones I never anticipated, the same ones that I encountered in junior high. Females still couldn't stick out. At one job I held two women demonized me for wearing black loafers and a black belt. One of them claimed she had told me her black belt was new, and I had still bought one; the other said I had bought loafers just two weeks after she did. I insisted that I had bought the plainest belt and loafers I could find; nothing that would even remotely smack of sartorial plagiarism. For months I stood in front of my closet weekday mornings, trying to intuit what those women would be wearing to avoid future accusations. I knew women had intuition; perhaps these women were angry that I hadn't been using it.
The more women I worked with the worse it got. In my mid 20s I worked at a new media company for women--about women, by women, in the service of women. I was so excited; this would be fun! Like one big sleepover. Unfortunately it was one of the worst experiences I've ever had. Imagine many people being nice to your face but scheming behind your back. It was like study hall revisited.
A woman managed, or ruled, the department. I hadn't been keeping current on how to be a proper female and got on her bad side right away. Several weeks into the job she called me into her office and asked me why I didn't come to see her more often. A male boss once told me I didn't have enough initiative and I needed to consult with him less; I suppose that, this time, I didn't want to seem incapable of working on my own. We had 13 other producers in the department who demanded her time, so I stuck to checking in with her once a day.
That wasn't enough, she said. She wanted me to check in three or four times a day. She reminded me of an insecure girl in my pre-teen clique who called my house all the time to talk about nothing. Talking made her feel popular, made her feel important.
It was a pitying male--one of the appreciated chocolate chips in our sickeningly sweet batter of feminine solidarity, who told me I was being pegged and to watch my back. I believed him, sadly, because he was a man.
The next time my boss called me into her office she told me I had 30 days to "get it." Get the girl disease.
"Go visit with her!" one of my more popular co-workers advised.
"And talk about what?"
"The weather, babies, anything!"
I had been scraping for bits of minutiae to talk about every day, but my boss was always in a meeting or out of the office. I finally got a meeting on calendar to talk about my upcoming project. The meeting never happened; she cancelled it. And the next one. And the next one. I'd fallen out of the cool crowd.
I used to have my sister play the bad cop and kindly tell irritating people to piss off. She couldn't help me this time, but she gave me advice: "Life is short," she said. "Do you really want to play by these rules?" I left the company, unsure of whether to raise a stink or leave in obscurity. If I defended myself, what would the others say about me? Would I be forced to hang with the unemployed dorks on the wrong side of the cafeteria?
Next up: Life on the wrong side of the cafeteria: It doesn't suck as bad as you think it might.
Priceless!!!! J.
Posted by: Joy DJ | October 23, 2004 at 07:48 AM
holy shit why are we like this. Jory, have you read Phyllis Chesler's book, Woman's Inhumanity to Woman? A bit of a rant but in her first chapter she offers some great advice - women need to learn how to disagree, to fight even, AND THEN MOVE ON.
I like your line that women cannot cope if you stand up for yourself, that they are like vampires in the sun - I wish I could believe it though, I've been standing up for myself for 44 years and there still be vampires about in these parts...
Chesler has some good points to make about the tendency women have to overidealise relationships, so that it is "dreadful, nearly the end of the world when things are not the way I want them to be" ( apologies to the fathers of rational therapy).
Looking forward to the next instalment.
Genevieve
Posted by: genevieve | October 23, 2004 at 09:34 AM
Hi Jory:
Great blog, exceptional writing. Too bad I didn't receive your email sooner - I just returned from San Francisco. Would have enjoyed meeting you in person. Should add that I too am working on my first book -- working title: "Unintentionally Wicked Women. Why Women Don't Help Women Win." Wouldn't it be a hoot if we could write together? Adding you to our blogroll....but in a unique place - under women helping women organizations!
kindly,
kirsten
Posted by: kirsten | October 28, 2004 at 06:39 AM