no boys allowed in the room!!!!

That sounds really mean. And depressing to be around.

xp that seems like a very high school way to talk about people.

we were all in our early twenties, and i'm not in touch with any of those people anymore. maybe that's not the way they are anymore.

hmm, the only time something like that comes up in conversation is akin to discussing a personality quirk or a known fact in terms of relationships with others. Like "attractive friend A" should be the one to approach the bartender to try and get us free drinks, etc.

it would be nice if the pressures that i assume lead to these behaviors were expressed directly instead of at the expense of other women. like, "it sucks that so much of women's perceived value is tied up in how they look." but i guess i'm stating the ridiculously obvious.

i guess some friends of mine (not just women, also guys) will occasionally be catty when it comes to an attractive woman's appearance and her relative success in the music scene.

yeah i have to say lots of the dudes i knew back then made hostile comments about this woman, too. those had a slightly different tenor, though; those dudes tended to be rejected suitors.

What my mom-in-law does is kind of the opposite, praising how beautiful someone is around them, in really kind of boundary-free ways, until they are clearly super uncomfortable. She does this to her daughters, especially, but one time she started in on me, telling my husband how lucky he was "to be able to love a woman with such firm and beautiful breasts and strong calves" etc etc...awkward!

omg Abbott

Your MiL is really...different. Isn't she.

my mom is kind of like that, actually, though (i hope!) not to that degree. i think that is kind of an opposite response to the same social pressures. like, i think some women i have known developed slavishly devoted friendships with v beautiful women as though those women's beauty is an accomplishment to be admired.

Oh man, yes, exactly! That is how my mom-in-law is about her daughter the hairstylist. "I am so lucky to have a daughter who gets to be beautiful and make people beautiful for a living." With real pride, and it's sweet but also a little awkward. I think that really is the #1 thing you can do, in her opinion, is be pretty.

sometimes i think my mom thinks that, too. :( except, on some level she knows better.

that is such a weird thing - how does she not see that it's dead obvious what she's doing? she could at least be a bit more subtle and undermine her 'friend' in a way that isn't so blatantly demonstrating her own insecurities!! xps to rox

i know my mom doesn't think like that. she always accentuated the virtues of kindness and usefulness

Sometimes my mom-in-law will start in on how "real" (meaning not skinny) my body is, and how laudable it is to be that "real of a woman." And it's kinda hard not to get fuckin' offended, because she's so obsessed w/everyone's weight, and her own weight. But OTOH it doesn't seem like a back-handed way of calling me a fatty: it seems, well, real. It's just a weird thing to praise someone for, it's weird praise, I don't know how to take it.

i don't want to be all let me tell you about my mother, but she's a complex case. i think on some level she experiences the mandate that women be beautiful as a real imposition, but her response to it is expressed...contradictorily. i don't mean to run her down; she's an excellent person.

xp

oh Abbott, that blows. women who are fucked up about this stuff project such weirdness into the world at other women.

the majority of my close female friends has always been prettier than me (i don't consider myself an ugly duckling or anything, i just have lots of super cute friends), so i got used to being the wingman. when i was younger i was envious of their good looks, but and sometimes jealous (i would be lying if i said i was ~never~ jealous), but now that i'm ooooold and married, it matters a lot less.

xp horseshoe - seriously!! One of my friends' moms was really hung up about weight and beauty and stuff like that, to the point where they were discussing what form of plastic surgery she should have at age 12.

I have known people like Roxy describes, definitely, but I can't stand that kind of crap so we are not friends.

I also have a friend our age who is like Abbott's MiL! She's a handful and that is only one way her neurosis manifests itself so I guess I just kind of ignore it. She will also exaggerate ppl's desirable qualities to the point of making shit up (like she would tell ppl that I was a genius and had the grades for law review but turned it down bc I didn't believe in their politics, which is nonsense from beginning to end).

I have another friend who always talks about how nice and smart and skinny women are, like including "skinny" in her short list of A+ personality characteristics. We don't talk much anymore, tho not just because of that.

that is such a weird thing - how does she not see that it's dead obvious what she's doing? she could at least be a bit more subtle and undermine her 'friend' in a way that isn't so blatantly demonstrating her own insecurities!! xps to rox

― just1n3, Friday, October 1, 2010 3:50 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark

^this, mainly. it's hard to respond to because it seems so sad for the person doing it, and obviously so. like, aren't you embarrassed saying this? usually i'm just like "what? i think she looks good."

If someone is that weird about others I just can't handle being pals w/them, usually. This is why I have about three friends.

Used to have this thing with a very close friend where we both would pre-empt feeling like one or the other of us was looking the best that evening with 'oh gawd tonight I AM THE MUM' and the person who didn't say it replied with 'NO I AM THE MUM' to infinity but of the friends I have who are objectively beautiful I can't say I've ever heard them discuss it - it's something others are left to do.

My aunt had an abundance of good looks and not very many female friends, but to my knowledge did nothing mean to other women over looks or men or whatever. Because she lived in the same microclimate where she was raised, the women she did befriend tended to come from outside the area or they were accomplished enough not to be made insecure by her looks. One of the neighbourhood women said to me after my aunt died that it was lucky for my cousin that she was also pretty, else she believed my aunt would not have been interested, which was pretty rank (but this woman drank herself to death 18 months after the conversation so perhaps had issues of her own).

I think there are a lot of girls on ILX who wd describe themselves as not historically being "good" at being friends with other girls. I'm glad we're all friends now, okay? These are the kinds of friendships you SHOULD be able to have.

To the extent that "we" are all "friends" -- you know, whatever you think that means. Just...take a compliment and shut up.

i'm pretty sure my mom had at least one friend like that (the catty about other women's appearances thing), and the way she dealt with it was to say, "You know, to be perfectly honest, I really just don't notice things like that. I just think of her as a nice person that (something involving what kind of food the pretty woman brings to parties, or something she does well, or a non-appearance related personality quirk)."

haha i am historically v v good at being friends with other girls so i'm sure i don't know what you're talking about! but...i have basically no irl friends at this point so maybe i'm lying.

xp

Man, for real! I love being friends with awesome ladies, on ILX and in person. I *did* used to think of myself that way but the older I get, the more cool women I meet. I think it's just people mellowing out with age/growing up.

xp to Laurel

i went through phases of having mostly girl friends, and having mostly guy friends - i think it's about even at this point - but yeah, ilx ladies, you rock!

HS, I think of you as my IRL friend! You just live far away. ;_;

aw! i was kind of joking about not having any friends but i miss you, Jenny! <3

all u ladies rule

i also love all of you

i haven't encountered too much of the thing that roxy describes, and i have mostly female friends. i talk to guys about music and movies and stuff, but not usually feelings. to me real friendship is when you share secrets, and i rarely (never) share secrets with male friends.

i also hate talking about my feelings so there's that too

this is not really on topic but it's been bugging me a bit lately and it's something i feel like venting about (warning: this post may be of the tl;dr variety).

so when i first started uni i made friends with this small group of girls who were waaaaaaaay different from me and my HS friends (i ended up at a uni none of my close friends were at), they were physically v v diff (tall and busty and fashionable) but also v v culturally diff (bold, kind of hilariously obnoxious, extremely worldly and well-travelled - even at 18 - and came from wealthy-ish - by NZ standards - families). i became particularly good friends with one of these girls - we shall call her 'kristy' - and over the course of 18 months 'we' had alienated ourselves from the three other girls.

cut to about 3 years after we met: i had become really good friends with this girl (we'll call her 'jane') who was v v sort of artsy and hip and slender and attractive and v well known in our small city. jane and kristy never became friends - by this point i wasn't hanging out with kristy as much, even tho we'd been joined at the hip for the first two years. jane was a lot different... way less judgmental and catty and bitchy than kristy, and the more i hung out with jane the more i realised that kristy was kind of awful and that i had become pretty awful too.

jane had met kristy's bf a couple of times and the two had really hit it off, which is maybe one of the main reasons kristy took an instant dislike to her. but then one time during a conversation kristy basically referred to jane as a slut and that's when i realised something was up. anyway, kristy and her bf broke up and about 6 weeks later jane drunkenly shagged him. now, right or wrong, i never told kristy - it wasn't my place, they were broken up, her and jane weren't friends at all, and kristy was still obsessed with her ex so i figured it would only hurt her. and i didn't want to be stuck in the middle.

some months went by and i started noticing that i couldn't get hold of kristy - she wasn't returning any of my calls. then i found out from mutual friends that she had gotten back with her ex and he had - selfishly, stupidly - confessed to having slept with jane.

so i didn't see kristy for a few years and then i ran into her one day and it seemed fine - she seemed happy to see me, i figured plenty of time had passed, she wasn't with the ex anymore. we exchanged #s and i tried getting hold of her to meet up for coffee... but no response.

cut to this year: i give it another shot and friend her on facebook. she accepts, i send a brief msg asking what she's up to, giving a little info about what i'm up to. no reply. then a few months later i realise she's defriended me!!

she was so much fun to hang out with, despite her nasty side, and i figured there was a good chance she'd grown out of it. idk. but it really annoyed me, the whole thing. i feel like, was she that insanely jealous of jane, that my being friends basically meant that would not be friends with me??

ps. jane is still my best best female friend.

lolz that is long

Maybe she associates you with that particularly painful memory. Like not only did she lose her best friend (you) to Jane, but her BF, too (even though that's not what happened - I'm thinking more in terms of perception). It sounds like a situation where it's nothing you did.

There are ppl on FB that I avoid because they were a part of a scene I was in during a, let's say, challenging period of my life, even though I've got no ill will towards those ppl and they did nothing wrong. I just want to put it all behind me for good.

what i find weird is that she is FB friends with a bunch of mutual friends from that same period, PLUS my other best friend, who has been my best friend since we were 13, and who kristy made fun of A LOT. so i feel like she's deliberately spiting me??

Oh, yeah, maybe. Does she think you're somehow complicit in the BF thing? It's pretty weird that she picked you to hold a grudge against, but also that she's doing it in such a passive/aggressive way.

can i admit that i had the ungenerous response that it sounds like good riddance, because this kristy sounds like a jerk? i have sort of an extreme policy towards dropping people from my life, though.

^ this

i don't know... it was almost 10 yrs ago now, and why wouldn't she just call me up and say 'i know you knew my ex fucked YOUR friend, why didn't you tell me'. i feel like maybe she blamed me bc if i hadn't been friends w/jane then her ex wouldn't have met/slept with her?? but he would have slept with SOMEONE.

xp i actually do too, but i have a terrible need for closure on things and if she had just said 'you fuckin bitch i hate you for x-y-z' then i would have not thought much of dropping her and made no attempt to rekindle the friendship. but it was the complete radio silence that bothered me. i have deep-seated issues about this kind of thing, tbh.

but maybe she's just a jerk? and not reflective? and more into mind games than honest communication? if she blames you for her ex boyfriend sleeping with someone after they broke up...i mean, who cares what this person thinks?

xp i get that but i think you should reframe it as the blissful exit of a toxic person from your life.

i know that's all v easy for me to say

i mean, that if you reframe it that way it gives you a closure that's under your control and not at the mercy of this unreliable kristy person.

horseshoe OTM

yeah i know you're totally right. and it annoys me even more that i'm bothered by the lack of closure.

she was so much fun to hang out with, despite her nasty side, and i figured there was a good chance she'd grown out of it.

i identify really strongly with this feeling, but it has historically kept me in friendships i really should have ended. and there are always other fun people to hang out with, who aren't soulcrushingly nasty. i think.