It’s been difficult for me to have girl friends throughout much of my life. I was never the “it girl” in my school and always managed to have only one girl friend at a time. As I grew up, I realized that wasn’t because we couldn’t be friends with the other girls. We didn’t hate each other, they didn’t hate me like I thought for many years. There was only one thing standing in the way of us bonding: unresolved issues with ourselves and our mutual perceived “betterness” of other girls.
There have been enough cheating scandals and allegations on my FYP on TikTok that it’s starting to leave me both annoyed and worried. I’m annoyed cause I wish I would stumble upon some good news for a change (imagine a headline like this: Couple Celebrates 65 Years of Love In Beautiful Forest Picnic Date), and worried cause I’m noticing a bitter bias towards women that always somehow ends with “if she was a true girl’s girl, she wouldn’t fuck around with said man”. In a previous post I playfully mentioned that social media is the new Page Six – I didn’t realize we were adopting the same petty non-researched approach to slanderous gossip as them.
I don’t have a tendency to play devil’s advocate, but today after having a particularly strong cappuccino I’d really like to. Let’s talk about “the girl’s girl” in regards to “the other woman”.
Cheating scandals, whether publicized or lived behind closed doors, often start centered around the man’s transgressions. Remember Khloe Kardashian’s baby daddy Tristan Thompson back in 2018? Once we’ve bashed the cheater to our satisfaction, we take out our anger and pure disappointment on “the other woman”. Women are supposed to always hold it together and never falter, how dare she do that to us collectively?! Remember the way Jordyn Woods was ostracized by both the industry and, it seemed, all womankind with access to an Internet connection. I find it confusing that we see things, especially complex matters like adultery, in such a black and white way. Or that we, as women, only seem to consider it worthy to help each other as strangers if we meet certain individualistic moral criteria.
Even if you yourself never faced the slightest doubt about your partner, surely you’ve been in situations where you’re vulnerable and easily influenced. Where you’ve been unhappy and found yourself being impulsive, not thinking about any consequence your actions may have. Wrong place, right time as they say. More often than not – unless someone is a serial cheater like Thompson and this isn’t an isolated incident – cheating as I’ve seen it is a result of a culmination of years of unhappiness for the sake of protecting others, timing, and revenge.
I recently read an incredible essay titled “Garish, Glorious Spectacles” on how the expectation of women being perfect has trickled into novels and fiction, and the likeability of female characters is affecting reviews. Roxane Gay, the ferocious author of said essay in her essay collection “Bad Feminist”, expresses her frustration with how we’re never allowed to see ourselves as flawed and human, not even in a fantasy world!! Go read it, I highly recommend it to anyone taking subways and metros and needing something short and snappy while they get from point A to point B.
In short, I agree with Gay and feel equally as frustrated. It’s so easy to see a story online and get on the cancel bandwagon, but I like to think we are smarter than that. There is no way every single cheating woman that’s ever been shunned in the media is a homewrecker by choice because she’s evil. In our personal lives if that was our friend in the press, our girl, we would handle things differently.
You know that one girl friend of your partner that you meet that starts becoming territorial completely unprovoked? That one girl that’s “just a friend” but she’s clearly advertising herself as “the one who’s been there all along”? She’s like the literal representation of Taylor Swift’s “girl next door” character in her music video for “You Belong With Me”. We’ve all met her, we’ve all been her with or without us knowing, and we’ve definitely all somewhat hated her.
It’s never been much of an issue for me to speak on such concerns with my partner, so obviously I would point out the discrepancies of how a friend seems to be actively trying to make me feel like I’m third wheeling in my own relationship. After getting into a heated argument over this whole “not just a friend” one night my partner started telling me about her. Actually telling me about her, her life, her flaws and where he believes they stem from.
While there may be no excuse for shitty behavior that makes me feel bypassed… I kind of saw his point.
No one has it easy, we all have that one little fatal flaw inside us – much like any fictional character – that makes us be not-so-great at times. Like a crack on a concrete street that no matter how much cement someone throws on, it still peaks through. My gut was right in that she was seeking validation, but it still didn’t feel fair to vilify her any more than I already had in my head. I can’t fix a problem that is not my own, and I won’t waste energy worrying about some possibility of “wrong place, right time”. I would much rather just trust my partner and if it comes down to it and I don’t feel good just… talk to her. Woman to woman. Maybe we can help each other, or at the very least have a cathartic conversation over a glass of wine.
Every single day we are faced with a world that is built against our body’s rhythm. Once we’ve taught ourselves to keep up, we are harassed wherever we go if we dare to feel a little good about ourselves. Once we’ve almost successfully conquered the right to be human, we find our medical autonomy slipping away, learn our period products are infused with lead, while a new men’s contraception (mind you THEIR FIRST medicinal contraceptive) is not only non-invasive but in GEL FORM!!
There is already tons stacked against us, we can’t expect each other to meet every expectation at every point in our lives. Maybe being a true girl’s girl means we should recognize men in power are doing anything they can to keep us from reaching our full potential. Maybe we shouldn’t allow them to pit us against each other so easily over trivial matters like popularity or a false sense of perfection.
When will being a girl’s girl mean to let other girls make mistakes? Or are in fact the girl’s girls a secret society of perfect women only accepting equally perfect applicants?
your friendly film person :) 
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