The hashtag #womenempoweringwomen has over 2.2 million posts on Instagram alone right now. It’s 2020, and one can’t turn on the television or scroll social media for very long without coming across something pertaining to women’s rights, equality, and empowerment.
But, alas, sometimes women are still mean to each other.
When girls were mean to me when I was younger, my dad would say, “Just kill them with kindness.”
My mom would say, “You just be your kind self and don’t worry about them.”
Friends would say, “She’s just jealous of you. Ignore her.”
Growing up, I wanted to be liked. I never wanted to cause a problem. I wanted everyone around me to be happy. Everyone has their bad moments, but I’d like to think I was mostly viewed as a nice person. But even nice people deal with mean people. It always bothered me when I wasn’t liked or other girls were mean or tried to sabotage me with classic mean girl tactics.
I try not to give people a reason to dislike me. That much hasn’t changed for as long as I can remember.
I thought women would change as I got older, that mean girls would also grow up and mature alongside me. They’d get over their insecurities and their meanness would dissolve.
Well, THAT was all false.
I’m tired of being nice to mean girls. I recognize that this is a very “human” statement, but I’m just being honest. I feel bad just typing it. Sometimes mean people can be the worst when it comes to affecting my attitude.
I always say it doesn’t take much effort to be a decent person, but sometimes it takes a little extra willpower to remain nice when the behavior isn’t reciprocated. Being nice to mean people can be draining, at least it is for me. People wonder why public service employees like policeman and nurses get jaded over time. Maybe it’s because no matter how much good they try to do and help they try to provide, there’s always one more bad interaction to ruin good intentions.
I’ve been thinking a lot about how to deal with mean girls. It seems like they keep popping up from time to time. Mean girls used to bother me a lot, and I would internalize those underlying feelings of rejection. I’ve matured in that regard over the years. One person’s acceptance adds no additional value to my worth as a person, so why bother stewing about it when they don’t like me? Don’t get me wrong, the initial sting is still there. I am just able to recognize it before I get too much into my head about it.
A week or two ago, I went out of my way to do something nice for a woman I know doesn’t like me. She’s told others she doesn’t like me, and her “reasons” were vague and trivial. If I didn’t know better, I’d say she hates me (and that’s a strong word). The specifics don’t matter, but she rolled her eyes at me and refused my kind gesture, making me really want to give up and just ignore her until the end of time.
I was ready to scream “ENOUGH WITH THE MEAN GIRL CRAP!” What really is so terrible about me in your eyes? It’s 2020. Women are all about empowering each other. It’s cool to be empowering. It’s trendy to #womenempoweringwomen.
And, more importantly, empowering and encouraging each other positively is the RIGHT thing to do.
When I first got out of the Secret Service academy, I experienced my first mean girl interaction on the job. I was twenty-three and still learning to navigate a big girl job in a “man’s world.” Another younger female agent decided she didn’t like me from the get-go, and she and I eventually exchanged words at a hotel during a campaign assignment in Kansas City. Many in the group had been drinking during dinner, so I was driving the rental van back to the hotel since I didn’t drink.
She sat in the back seat making rude comments about me the whole way back to the hotel (and not in a whisper so I wouldn’t hear). I’d had enough by the time we got back, and we lashed out at each other. Later that night, I reached out and asked to talk. I thought we worked things out. I distinctly remember saying, “You were also hired young like me. I’m still figuring things out. I don’t understand why you and I can’t be there for each other and help each other.”
I thought we were fine. We were never friends, but we were civil. All good, right?
Fast forward ten years (yes, ten years), and I ran into her in New York City while visiting another Secret Service friend. She looked at me, I smiled at her, and she gave me a dirty look and turned toward my friend as if I didn’t exist. My friend, who was in the other rental van on the Kansas City trip, was aware of what had happened years before and commented on how awkward that was that she pretended I was invisible for the whole conversation.
“It’s pretty sad that ten years later, she couldn’t just say hello and move on with life.”
But I didn’t lose a second of sleep over it. I wasn’t the one who made that awkward. What has to be going through a women’s mind when she decides to be that way? Probably more than I realize, and it probably has absolutely nothing to do with me in the end.
I won’t go on and on with every instance of mean girl-ness in my past or present. But the sheer volume of it, especially as I’m getting older, is saddening today more than it is irritating.
So… here is the question I think needs addressing in my life:
What role does a mean girl play in my life?
It’s like the Secret Service concept of access control I tout so much. A strong woman must know when another person should have access granted into her life, when access should be denied, when access should be revoked, and when access should be limited.
Here’s my blunt answer to my question:
A mean girl should not have a role in my life.
Why? Her criticism is ill-intentioned and not constructive. She doesn’t point out my mistakes or flaws with the attitude of “I know you can do better, and I’m right here to encourage you while we figure our own stuff out.” She doesn’t offer a solution or assistance. She’s the demolition woman rather than a rebuilding team. When I’m broken like any other woman, she doesn’t come with a hammer and nails to help put things together. She swings the hammer, and I have to dodge its blow lest she change me negatively with some new and unimproved rough edges.
There are times when I can’t avoid a mean girl physically. Sometimes she’s a coworker or someone I have to interact with professionally at some point. But I can avoid giving her access to my sense of self-worth. I can revoke her role in my life if I’ve let her in before. I can rebuild myself and get better despite her. That inner growth makes it easier to keep her and her negativity out of my thoughts and feelings about myself.
The more I think about it, the more I feel like I might need to flip things around, though.
Here’s my second, and probably more important, question:
What is MY role, if any, in a mean girl’s life?
Here’s what I know:
1. My role in a woman’s life is NEVER to bring her down or make her feel bad about herself.
2. There will be women in my life who will not be there for a positive experience.
3. I must embrace, appreciate, uplift, and grant access to the women who ARE uplifting and examples of positive relationships.
My role in a mean girl’s life is merely a circumstantial opportunity for kindness. It is possible to be the bigger person and have self-respect at the same time. I establish the boundaries between us, and I need to recognize that not every woman will be a positive and empowering presence. Not every woman will treat me the way I want to be treated or the way I treat them.
But, regardless, here’s the kind of woman I want to be.
I want to be the woman the mean girl knows she could come to in a tough time, and I’d be the first to give her a hug. I also want to be the woman with enough good sense and self-respect to expect nothing in return.
My role in her life is to be what she is not to me.
My role in her life is to build her up when I can and continue on with my life. My role is to protect myself while providing a layer of love and protection to others whenever possible.
Sometimes I’m just not liked for my style of humanness. I’m not enough for some. I’m too much for others.
The women who should have more of a role in my life are the ones who encourage my style of humanness to be authentic and heard because I DO have something to offer despite my incredibly flawed humanness. I can be meaningful despite it.
For example, last week a female executive offered to help me with my keynotes and pointed out a correction that needed to be made to my website. In the same week, another female told me to “get a life” with a public comment on last week’s blog.
Which woman is genuinely demonstrating empowerment? The answer should be obvious.
I read once that we can all learn from criticism if we can take what’s constructive from it. It’s hard for me to find anything constructive in the blog comment. If I reach a little bit (a lot), get a life isn’t bad advice, I suppose. I already have a life, though. In fact, I keep trying to be better throughout it. I do that by reflecting and learning from my experiences, and I’ll continue to “seriously” blog about whatever the hell I want because I don’t write to impress people and win their favor. I want to move them and make them think inwardly because that’s where change really starts.
I want to be part of the change, and I’ll always have inward work to do. You don’t have to read about it on Monday’s if you don’t want to. I’ll be okay because I’m learning to welcome the positive relationships rather than shut everyone out because of a few mean girls.
Embracing the typos till next week… and appreciating the strong women who come up beside me and say, “You’ve got this. Let’s keep moving forward together.”
Mel