No One Hates Women Like Women Hate Women

The following blog cannot be, in any way, proven by any concrete or statistical evidence. I am nevertheless positive that everything about to be said is undeniably correct. As it stands, if you find yourself in disagreement with the sentiments shared here you are a) lying to yourself or b) a freak unlike anything else found in nature.


So there I was standing in line at the local Wal-Mart buying Gatorade and socks when I noticed the cute check-out girl checking out the girl in front of me. She wasn't checking her out in a fantastical Lesbian sort of way though*, she was checking her items through the scanner in a very professional manner. Professional with one exception: standing behind the girl making purchases, I noted at least three seperate occasions in which the cashier gave this female customer the classic head-to-toe-to-head glance. She might have been noticing the girls track shorts, rolled at the top making the shorts incredibly scant. Possibly she was noticing the girl's nuclear-orange skin, a sure sign of a purchased tan. Perhaps, the girls shoes were untied. The thoughts going through the cute cashier's head in regards to this highschool heather remains unclear, but it nevertheless warranted the head-to-toe-to-head glance. The dreaded and damning head-to-toe-to-head glance.

Now where I come from, the most offensive non-verbal cue that one person can send to another that they do not think highly of them is to make eye contact, immediately whip their gaze from the person's eyes to the person's shoes and back again. This head-to-toe-to-head shift must be quick and pointed as the essential message being portrayed in this action is 1) yes, I am sizing you up and 2) as it did not take long for me to do so, you should deduce that I don't find you noteworthy.

That's a tough insult to take. No one wants to take a mere glance to be sized up. We want to be glanced at over and over endlessly until the glancer becomes cockeyed with intrigue and mystery.

This head-to-toe-to-head glance seems especially harsh when the interaction occurs between two women. Eyes and shoes are the only two components of this interaction and while the eyes can take a flying leap, there ain't nothin' more important to a woman than the shoes on her feet.

If you are reading this and you are a woman, you had better not try to convince me that shoes are, in no way, important to your everyday existence. I refuse to entertain the notion that if your boyfriend invited you to the Jimmy Chu boutique to check out the new arrivals that you wouldn't immediately call your mother to inform her that you were now positive that this man was the man you were meant to marry. If I get any defensive "up-with-women/ girlpower" messages claiming any of the above, you can plan on my next blog focusing on woman's natural disdain for being pigeonholed despite those pigeonholes quite often being correct.

Today's pigeonhole is that women carry an inexplicable lust for shoes (and handbags, but we'll wrestle that gator later). Girlie-girls, overly-dedicated joggers, business-classies, tomboys, Joan Jett Lesbians; it doesn't matter. Shoes are important and as a woman, you want people to notice the kickassitude of your shoe collection.
Back to the head-to-toe-to-head glance.

Imagine the outright blasphemy of one woman making a point of noticing another woman's shoes and not saying anything. There are two women here, they both know the rules. You pick something about the woman and compliment it, even if you don't actually like it.**

My grandmother always told me that if I ever found myself unable to say something nice about someone than I shouldn't say anything at all. But here at the Wal-Mart with the head-to-toe-to-head glance, that's not what's going on. Grandma never told me to purse my lips, sassily shake my head in rebellious circles and look away in a manner clearly resembling disgusted boredom at the person of whom I was not saying something unkind towards. That would defeat the purpose.

As a man, I am an innocent bystander in this wonderful war. Which isn't to say that men are not the cause of some (most?) of this animosity.

We are the oil and women are both Iraq and the U.S.

Men are religion and women are both Israel and Palestine.

And if I may speak frankly, this is an amusing place to be. Everyone likes a good jealousy fight and no one does subtlety and jealousy better than women. Little kids have cornered the market on bickering; men punch pretty well; but no one slowly grinds away at a woman better than another woman who has what she wants. It has often been said that women don't dress to impress men, but to impress women. This seems too exlusionary of men. Women dress to outdo other women in hopes of seeming more attractive to men. Saying that men are in no way part of an equation that often includes:
- choosing an outfit,
- taking a 40-minute long shower,
- allowing the new cleanlieness of the woman's body change her mind on the outfit she chose therefore causing her to choose a new outfit,
- hair drying and straightening,
- leg shave,
-becoming so proud of the newly shorn legs than another outfit change is warranted to show off said legs,
- bracelet, necklace, earring matching (this waill cause anywhere between two and seven more outfit changes),
- an additional face scrub (not including the face scrub applied at the time of 40-minute shower),
- followed by makeup application (i.e. base, eyeshadow, lipstick, eyeliner, blush, clown nose, and rainbow wig),
- followed by one final wardrobe change
- and ending with seven hours of standing in front of the shoe closet (that's right, a whole closet for shoes) figuring what pair will look best while also causing no less than five blisters over the course of the night.

If you still claim to be a heterosexual woman going through all of that not to impress heterosexual men, but to impress other women... then you, ma'am, are a homosexual woman. Take a look around, enjoy your time in their club.
Now if you'll excuse me, I've gotta go wax my chest and do a thousand stomach crunches for the benefit of all my dude buddies.

* * * * *

I went out to dinner with a group of friends recently. There were six of us, but only one of us were female; a fact that went unnoticed (or unnoted anyway) until one of the guys mentioned how attractive our waitress was.*** Soon the other guys created a chorus of agreement. Suddenly our waitress was the table's person-of-desire. But before the conversation was allowed to spiral into actual hooting, the sole girl in our perverted little group did what I've seen happen in this situation all-too-often; she began pointing out this waitress' faults.

While one of my friends lustfully likened our waitress to a Black Widow spider that would wrap her legs around him and kill him deadly, my female buddy (whom I will call "Mindy") quietly pointed out that the blackwidow's arms swung funny giving her an awkwardly funky disco walk. This walk of hers wasn't ridiculous or cartoonish and despite the fact that Mindy was correct in her assessment that our waitress had an unflattering walk; I doubt it would have gone noticed by anyone had Mindy not pointed it out.

So I ask you... why point out a slightly odd walk? Who does that?

It is beside the point that Mindy was not romantically interested in any of us around the table, what might not be beside the point is the unabashed, unmistakeable, positive attention being given in one direction (black widow) but not another (Mindy). What is humorous about this situation is that only our table was aware of the attention the blackwidow was getting; from her vantage point there was nothing unabashed or unmistakeable. For all any of us knew, our waitress was judging Mindy because of her petite size or fashionable jacket or the fact that she was surrounded by five guys.

It's humorous because all any of us really know is what is in our own thoughts. We are left to assume only the worst in regards to what lies in everybody else's.

* * * * *

I once dated a girl resembling Cameron Diaz. She wasn't the spitting image of the actress or anything, but she was close enough that it was not uncommon for the similartities to be noted. As it happened, I was a big fan of the actresses movies. At the time, I was also a fan of Katie Holmes (this was long before Mrs. Cruise was knocked up and brainwashed). Whenever either actress would come up in conversation, my ex would embrace Cameron Diaz and rail against the inexplicable popularity of Holmes.

Long after she and I broke up, we had a candid discussion about this. She admitted that every time I made a complimentary statement regarding Cameron Diaz, she took it upon herself to read my sentiments as a thinly veiled (and probably unintentional) compliment toward her as well, (as she was aware that people saw similarities between the two of them). Katie Holmes, on the other hand, looked or seemed nothing like her and in the same manner she took Cameron to be a positive comment about her, she deemed the opposite to be true with Holmes.

Oddly, this is the opposite of every other experience I've had with women disparaging other women; or anyone disparaging anyone else, to be honest. My ex embraced women who resembled her because she read their popularity as a gauge for her own acceptance. Speaking personally, it is those that I resemble that make me the most nervous. If I find myself standing next to some 5'9" weightlifter with greased-up blonde hair, I don't see him as competition. The people interested in his services won't be interested in mine. That's life. We aren't applying for the same jobs, or vying for the same concert tickets, you know?

If social competition is a given (and it always has been) and we feel the need to compete, we shouldn't be competing against the "thems" out there, we should be battling the "us'".

But this is the reason no one hates women like women hate women. Women have too many types of competition. It's coming from every direction and near impossible to defend against. I'm a guy, an outsider. I said at the onset of this blog that I cannot prove anything I've written here, but it nevertheless seems that many women knee-jerkingly find some sort of fault in whoever it may be they sense is a threat to them. Someone who might garner more attention than themselves. So... Mindy sees our waitress' arm-wagging duck-waddle and points it out in hopes of shutting the rest of us up. Our waitress also looked to be in her mid-thirties and one bad relationship away from blowing up 50 lbs heavier, but those last two observations were made by me in an attempt to play devil's advocate and align myself with Mindy. 

And the women at the Wal-Mart relied on the classic head-to-toe-to-head glance as a defensive meneuver communicating that orange skin and chiseled thighs do not impress her much and won't work in attracting men.

Both assumptions of which are, of course, laughably incorrect.

Meanwhile, I sit by happily giggling, smuggly at all the soldiers in this subtle girl war because neither our waitress or the faked baked Wal-Mart shopper could possibly hold a candle to Cameron Diaz.

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* Am I correct in capitalising the word "Lesbian"? I feel as if I've seen it capitalized before. But it's a mystery. Kinda like how being Jewish is always capitalized. You can be christian instead of being Christian, but you cannot be jewish. You must always be Jewish. Like being Jewish is the same as being Polish or German. As if Judaica was a country.

The way God is always referred to as He or Him not he or him.

How any of that is related to woman-on-woman love escapes me, but I thought it would be interesting to notate.

** Many times, I bet women compliment a hairdo or a handbag that they specifically don't like just to insure the woman will continue walking around with it, thus causing the complimented woman to go on looking stupid and leaving the complimenting woman feeling "on top".

I can't prove that this happens, but you can't disprove it does either.

*** I was not a part of that chorus. I was sitting on the toilet vowing never to eat beandip as early in the morning as I had that day, and therefore I missed the first few exchanges between our waitress and my table.