by Thando Mgobhozi
In a world where women already have it harder than men why is it still evident that we bring each other down?
Where does all of this come from?
It always seems as though some women regard their fellow women as their competitors for some odd reason. You ever look at another woman and think to yourself, “oh what a perfect life she has or she’s so beautiful, has the perfect body and is just successful,” the list is endless really. You begin to envy the next woman just because she seems to have it all together and you don’t and that’s where the cycle of jealousy, hatred, and judgment starts to come in. You don’t get the attention you want or think you need and all of a sudden start to bring down another woman who seems to be getting all that attention and spotlight.
All of this has to do with how one feels about themself. It usually has a lot to do with issues of insecurity and self-esteem. It is very easy to look down on yourself as a woman and think you are not good enough or worthy because of all these pressures that society puts on women to look and behave a certain way. Most of the time we do things as women to impress others and not because it’s necessarily what we want to do. We put people’s needs first before our own and that is why you will never be happy for another woman as you are not happy with yourself. Self-love is a journey that you constantly have to work on improving in your life, and when you finally get there, it is the most amazing feeling and you will see no need to bring another woman down because you understand that your journeys are not the same.
When you have things that you have not dealt with or come to terms with about yourself you will always find a way to bring those around you down and it’s not just women. An example of women bringing each other down is when they find out that they are being played by one man. Nasty and totally uncalled for words and comments about the other woman are always thrown at each other during such confrontations. The anger, hurt and resentment is never really directed towards the man who did both of them wrong. Women often in such cases start comparing themselves to each other trying to find what made their man choose another woman over them. What they fail to understand is that it has absolutely nothing to do with them but everything to do with the man who cheated on them.
It is so rare to find men behaving in such a manner when they find out that they’re dating the same woman, they never really insult each other and make all sorts of comparisons, instead, they’ll do all of that to the woman who cheated on them. With women, it gets so hectic and ugly to the point that it even gets physical. I’ve always thought about how I would react if I found myself in a similar situation and for me, I’d always be the bigger person and walk away because I truly believe that my energy should not be wasted on fighting another woman, especially for a man. I’d rather reserve that energy for more important things in my life and I wish women could understand this.
A time like that is truly when you should stand together as women and not bring each other down and if women stood together in times like that then no man or anybody else would bring them down and they would totally conquer the world. You would think that it would be easy for us to stand together as women because only we truly understand what we face and go through on a daily basis but you’d be surprised to know that that’s not the case. We often judge the next woman because we don’t understand or want to try and understand why it is that they do what they do and make the choices they make.
I want to end this off by a quote that says, “another woman’s beauty is not the absence of your own.” I just think it is the most profound statement ever because as women we tend to think that we are less of something every time we see a woman who looks better than us or has more than us which is not the case. Comparison really is the thief of joy, learn not to compare yourself to other women and there will be no need to bring the next woman down.
