I had a dream the other night that I was at an audition. Right before my turn, I had to watch a girl audition before me. And she was amazing. I mean, this girl was tap-dancing, singing, AND playing the ukulele (and she bore a strong resemblance to Ann Miller). In my dream, I wanted to back out of the audition, but an even more pervasive feeling was smallness. I felt like I was growing more invisible and inconsequential by the second.
I’ve had stress-theater dreams before where someone tells me I’m in a show and I have to go on stage, but I have none of the lines memorized. Or stress-teacher dreams when I show up at school without a shirt on, or stress-college dreams when I find out I still need five credits to graduate. Or even stress-marriage dreams when I realize we’re still not married even though we have six kids together. But this wasn’t like that. I kind of laughed to myself about it all morning—I mean, that’s pretty funny, a tap-dancing, singing, ukulele-playing Ann Miller—but then I realized: I know where that came from…
I recently felt intimidated by another woman, and it took me by surprise. It’s been a long time since I felt small and inconsequential in someone’s presence. Humbled, sure. Inspired, yes. But suddenly self-conscious and uncomfortable about being me? It’s been awhile. While talking to her, I found myself wondering, “I bet she has a ‘beauty regimen’, whatever that is. I’ve never had a ‘beauty regimen’. Should I start having a ‘beauty regimen’? Buy creams or something?” I had a flash-memory of something I had passed in the store, some kind of skin-boosting de-wrinkling face mask that maybe I should have bought after all.
Then, by an act of the Holy Spirit I’m sure, I realized I was objectifying this person. I was assessing this girl like a virus scanner, looking for ways she was all noise and no substance, only because I felt small in her presence. This is the embryonic state of The Mean Girl. From here, it can only get so much worse. I snapped out of it, hoping I hadn’t caused palpable tension in the room with my laser-beam nasty-probe. Ideally, I wouldn’t have had to enter into the equation at all, except to offer my hand and heart to someone new.
As women, why do we do this? Why do we compare ourselves?
Ironically, I’ve been advising my daughters through similar things. Growing up in public school really was like the scene in Mean Girls when the students are acting like animals in the wild, either on the prowl, on the defensive, or tearing someone to pieces. That was definitely the subtext of my childhood education. When girls meet someone they are intimidated by, they either avoid them, grovel, or become their best friend just to keep them close. I thought by homeschooling my children, they wouldn’t encounter that kind of behavior. While they’re not immersed in it, I’m actually really thankful they get glimpses of it in social situations. It’s interesting to see how they react, how it stabs them to the quick, but how easy it is to fall prey to petty behavior. I’ve seen them leave a social situation and, as though having been in a girl-world-trance, break out of it with shock and confusion about how they acted, or at having been injured by another girl’s behavior. Why and how did that happen? their bewildered faces say. Because you’re a lady-human, I reply. And we have to consciously choose charity every moment of our lives.
St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross famously wrote, “The world doesn’t need what women have, it needs what women are.” We nurture and cultivate life, we care for and draw out the individual, we seek out the heart and connect it to all aspects of living. This is certainly true in the reverse: the malice we are capable of on a personal, intimate level can be destructive. It’s the kind of harm that breaks down a person piece by piece from the inside, chipping away little by little. But when we, as women, use our personal insight to encourage and build up a person, the result is truly remarkable. Instead of reading another woman like a Pinterest-board and seeing all the things we aren’t or don’t have, we can thank God that amazing person exists in the world. (Because, honestly, the world would undoubtedly be a better place with more tap-dancing, singing, ukulele-playing Ann Millers.)