Competitive Women: Are you a mean girl?

I have an obvious confession to make: all throughout high school and much of middle school I was your typical nasty/pretty girl who put other people down to make herself feel better. I wanted to be the best at everything and any girl who came along and threatened that had to be put in her place.

My arrogance and insecurity proceeded all other personality traits, and my tongue was as sharp as a machete. I made people feel bad, really bad and I regret much of what I said and did during that time.

I developed the habits from my Mom, a mean girl in her own right. The key is to build people up when they please you and then completely destroy them if they do anything to upset you. You feed them compliments and they like the attention you're giving them because you're smart, pretty and popular and then you take it all away if they don't do exactly as you say.

I call it "meangirling" and we women do it all the damn time. We shun certain women while praising others, and we all have that bit of competitive nature about us because we live in a capitalist society. It's inevitable to experience, but not impossible to circumvent.

But I've grown past that now, or at least I'd like to think so. It's not as easy as you might think to reverse your mean girl ways, but at a certain point you realize that manipulating everyone around you only makes you feel empty and alone. It's much better to try to relate to others than to always prove to them that you're better than they are because you aren't. That shit won't get you anywhere and so I revamped my mean girl ways but a few traits still linger, and it's often subconscious.

When people like me and compliment me, I eat that shit up. I love it, and get off on being the prettiest bitch at the party, the smartest, most successful, but you can't always be that. And if that's the foundation for your self-esteem, it could crumble at any second.

A good friend of mind had an outing for her birthday and didn't invite me because she assumed it was too sporty of an event for me. What she forgot is that she'd mentioned the outing to me and I reluctantly agreed to go. The day of the outing came and I asked her what time we were meeting up and she let me know that I wasn't included.

She felt guilty that she left me out, but that wasn't enough for me. I needed to dig the knife in to her back a little deeper and make her feel even worse. That's what the old Kris would have done -- shunned her until she proved herself worthy and that's complete crap! You can't mean girl your friends, let that shit go and stop trying to compete with every woman you meet.

So she's prettier, skinnier and smarter, who gives a fuck? Do you, and stop worrying about the next girl, because it will only distract you from everything you're meant to accomplish.

If you find yourself always comparing yourself to other women, or disliking another woman simply because of jealousy, stop and evaluate your thoughts and feelings because it's just not okay to treat people that way.

Love,
Kris