More comic genius from N8!In one of the funniest stories to come out of Hollywood recently, Heidi Klum reportedly sent Victoria “Skeleton” Beckham a dozen of the decadent Sprinkles cupcakes for her birthday. It gets better: The attached note added that a dozen would be coming every Friday for the rest of the year.
I’ll admit it. I totally laughed at this. The irony is as sweet as, well, a cupcake. But the more I thought about it, the more Mean Girls/Vicious PR Stunt it seemed. I love Heidi Klum (I used to be a Project Runway junkie before I gave up TV) but girlfriend seems to fall totally in the “genetically blessed” department. While Posh, for all of her too-skinny foibles, seems to have to work very hard for her (stick) figure. It seems mighty cruel to throw that in her face for 52 weeks straight.
If Heidi were truly concerned about Posh’s health, she wouldn’t have sent her cupcakes. Brown rice and salmon, maybe. Plus breath mints. If she were a true friend, she wouldn’t have done it such a public manner either. And I’m sure it’s no coincidence it comes on the heels of Ms. Beckham’s interview with Barbara Walters in which she declared she would never, ever eat a cookie.
Cat Fight!
There’s competition. Like when Gym Buddy Allison (MizFit – you are so right – everyone needs an Allison!) and I try and out-sprint or out-lift each other. I usually win the former, she always wins the latter, in case you were curious. Plus she spanked me in basketball today. This kind of competition benefits both parties and usually doesn’t leave any hard feelings.
And then there’s competition. We women can be notoriously catty with each other. For instance, when you tell an embarrassing story about your friend in public to make yourself look smarter. Or when we let a friend go out in a fugly dress because we know we’ll outshine her at the club. This cattiness can be very insidious. This is especially so when we sabotage eachother’s efforts to get or stay healthy.
This is a hard line to draw, as often the perpetrator doesn’t even consciously realize why she’s doing what she’s doing. There are a myriad of reasons why we’d want to keep a sister down:
1. Guilt. Watching your friend suddenly lose a lot of weight or run a marathon may make you feel guilty about your excess poundage or couch potato skills. Making snarky comments about how she’s “such an exercise fanatic” or the “diet nazi” make you feel less guilty by demonizing her behavior.
2. Fear of Loss. Maybe now that she’s finally exercising every day you fear that she’ll abandon you for her new fit buddies. Or at least abandon your weekly Dairy Queen run.
3. Fear of Change. You fear that her new chicken-and-veggies meals will mean that you
will have to give up your movie theater popcorn. And you just aren’t ready to give it up, darnnit!
4. Jealousy. This one probably should have been number one but in an effort to trust our better natures I’m sticking it in at fourth. It’s really hard to watch someone get something that you’ve wanted for a long time, and possibly have even worked harder for.
4b. Loss of Identity. This one is closely tied to jealousy, I think. It can be really hard to take if you are used to being The Thin One in your group of friends and then suddenly you’re not. Or if you are The Healthy Eater and your friend goes all macrobiotic on you and usurps your role. (Which, incidentally, is how many eating disorders are born.)
5. Annoyance. Discovering healthy living is often like finding religion – the person eats, sleeps and breathes Women’s Health magazine. They evangelize fish oil supplements to anyone who will listen. They demonize chocolate. And too often they have this air of moral superiority throughout it all. Who wouldn’t want to smack them? Or at least send them a dozen cupcakes every month?
I Hate to Admit This
In my past life as a waitress, there were few customers more irritating than the woman who would order the prime rib with mashed potatoes & creme brulee but then insist that all the fat be trimmed from her meat, her potatoes be made with the skins on and cooked with no butter in soy milk and the creme brulee be fat free with Splenda caramelized on top. We’d generally do no more than an exaggerated eye roll but if she kept complaining and sending it back to get “fixed”, well then, we’d, um, fix it. Especially if she was a teeny tiny gorgeous model type. It was like we felt it was our duty to fatten her up. And punish her for being more gorgeous, successful and rich than we lowly waitresses.
I can’t believe I’m telling you this (guilty conscience, much?). My fellow wait staff and I would intentionally slip crap into her food. Not literal crap, thank you very much. But we’d pour oil and butter over her veggies. We’d pre-butter her rolls. We’d *gasp* switch out her diet Coke with real Coke. Even the chefs would get in on it by purposely choosing the fattiest cut of meat or ladling on an extra cup of Bernaise sauce.
All of which is not to say that you should fear your waitress every time you go out to eat. We saved this awful behavior for the select few who made royal pains out of themselves. (Seriously – don’t order prime rib if you can’t handle the “marbling.” There is no possible way we can cut out all of the intramuscular fat for you. Order a chicken breast. Or the kabobs. Asking for a few substitutions is fine but don’t try and rewrite the evening special’s entire recipe. ) Wait – did I just try and rationalize that? Egads.
My point is that I’ve been on both sides of this equation. It doesn’t feel good. When will we learn as women that tearing each other down does nothing more than lower the entire playing field?
Are You a Cady or a Catty?
I know you’ve had experience with this. If you’re being honest you’ve probably had experience on both sides of the fence;) Have you ever been sabotaged by a girlfriend? How do you conquer your baser impulses?
Although if you do think your diet Coke tastes like regular, then it probably is. Sometimes we just ran out of diet.
I'm not going to say anything about seeing girl-on-girl sabotage, though I have seen it. It was not pretty.
I only hope Victoria Beckham has the cojones to send the cookies back to Heidi Klum. Perhaps with a bite or a few of the cookies missing just to show she's a good sport. And perhaps a bit**y note. And a pair of pants that are a few sizes too big. Is that enough sabotage? ;^)
Can't we all just get along?
I admit, it IS hard to have the roles reversed – when I was growing up, I was tall and stick skinny. My best friend was short and chubby. When we became adults, I gained weight and she lost. And lost. And lost. To the point where I started to worry. Since then, we've both had our ups and downs, weight-wise, but through it all, we've remained fast friends for over 40 years.
Okay, where was I going with this? Crap. Can't remember.
I think I'll send her some cupcakes – she recently lost a whole bunch of weight again…..
First, I just want to say that I TOTALLY sympathize with the staff at restaurants when high-maintenance customers come in. (Seriously, people, if you want your meals prepared just so, stay home and COOK them!!!!!)
(I was in a show once in which the lead actress was a huge pain in the butt, especially toward the costume folks. So during the run they would take all her costumes in a half inch every week. She freaked out because she thought she was gaining weight. Incredibly mean, yes, but so was she.)
(Not that I'm advocating this kind of behavior. Much.)
Anyway, we women can be just awful to each other. And yes, it comes from jealousy, insecurity, and all the things you mentioned. But when we tear someone else down, we're only diminishing ourselves.
GIRL YOU ARE SUCH A GREAT WRITER.
Seriously.
(please tell me you spend eons editing? or is this just what pours outta you? must.know.)
ANYWAY.
please dont hate me when I say that Ive never much cared what other people did or how they look or any of that.
however I DID work as a hostess for years and watch those painintheglutes customers with their inane requests annoy the waitstaff and witness the same sort of goings on you mentioned.
especially the diet drink switch 😉
for some reason that provided the waitpeeps never ending giggles
IMO at restaurants its way beyond the "sister you so skinny I wanna feed you a muffin" and more into the "for the love of julia child STAY HOME if you have such dietary "restrictions""
(food allergies :))
As women we can be worse to ourselves than any man can be.
Between the catty comments about looks, how we parent, our Signficant Others, how our houses look….Its amazing how mean we can be to one another.
And I know that Heidi sending the cupcakes was mean, but I have an irrational hatred of Posh so I still chuckle.
Its mean, I know.
Hilarious! And I'd say that woman in the restaurant totally had it coming.
It's weird, though, I haven't noticed this jealousy/sabotage dynamic among my friends. Perhaps it's because most of my friends are middle-aged lesbians and we tend to be more concerned about the health thing and less concerned with the looks thing. And we're mostly all happily married and boring and are not dating and putting ourselves in a position to feel self-conscious about how we look compared to other women. We look just fine to us even if we know the world might disagree!
Gee, and I thought all we had to worry about at restaurants was whether or not someone peed in the soup.
I have a long-term (20 year) friend who was always the skinny one. She was not happy when we reversed roles several years ago. She still verbally sabotages me when we get together. ("You're obsessed with exercise." "You're anorexic." etc etc.)
I was never a waitress but sis would tell how people would order the most fattening thing & a diet soda….
I have seen & witnessed this catty thing! It is UGLY! I am not into that as a "mature" adult.. yeah, right!!! BUT, when I was younger, I am pretty sure I did some catty things although I can't remember specifics… trying to keep the guilt away. Didn't one of the blogs say, let the guilt go! 🙂
I really like to see people do well with health and fitness! Some other areas, maybe not so much 🙁
I need to work on that.
How about when the cattiness comes from your own sister? That really hurts.
Last summer I finally went to my doctor to get help with my weight and he put me on a program that included a low dose appetite suppressant along with 45 minutes of daily exercise and tons of veggies/fruit. I had been working my @ss off for weeks and was really proud of the 30 pounds I had lost when my brother-in-law asked if I had been working out to lose my weight. Before I could answer, my sister popped up and said, "NO she's been taking diet pills!" in her snarkiest voice. Did I mention she was about 50 pounds overweight? Anyway, yeah so her comment totally knocked the wind out of my sails. I never expected that from her.
You forgot another kind of sabotage. When I started recovering from my ED, my friends kept telling me that because I was still exercising and substituting chocolate protein powder in milk for dessert every other night, I had not recovered. Which was news to my nutritionist and therapist, as I was gaining muscle like crazy (it probably didn't help that because I started lifting then, my body fat percentage went down, so I went from skinny to toned).
It was like they didn't (and still don't) believe I could be fully recovered and not gain tons of fat.
I am loving the comics!
Girl hate, sabotage and drama drove me crazy in high school and college. Now I am preparing myself to to re-live it as my daughter gets older. I don't understand why women have to be so judgmental and catty towards other women.
I do think it is rooted in self-esteem as the women I know who are the most catty & judgmental seem to have very low self-esteem as well.
I hope to teach my daughter that girl sabotage, cattiness and drama are more about the OTHER persons feelings about themselves. Not a reflection of who she is.
But Victoria Beckham saying she would never eat a cookie, that's just ridiculous. I wonder what waitresses put in her food when she goes out to eat 😉
I don't think I've ever done it. At least intentionally. I've always had an honesty policy that conflicted with this. Although, my friends have done this to me. I know they have and it sucks.
I've been brutally honest (to the point of almost cruelty…maybe some would have disagreed with the almost part) though, so I'm no saint.
No matter how it comes out, low self esteem sucks and can make you hurt the ones you care about.
Char – another great post!
Guilty as charged. My non-gym friends have been put to the back burner. I don't mean to do this, but I seem to do more with my gym friends because I don't know much about them other than meeting a few minutes before class. & I feel they have more time for me. I have a friend now that doesn't have time for the gym and I have lost contact with her. Maybe if she was at the gym with me, we would have more contact. Plus I'm selfish with my evenings as that is my time for myself. I'm a bitch for not picking up the phone to call and I need to work on that. I just don't like to hear the constant Army-talk that she brings and I'm sure she's tired of my gym stories and outtings without her.
I'm torn between my two loves, gym time and friend time.
Oh no, do wait staff hate it when I order just water to drink? 🙁 I've always wondered that…I'm not being cheap or drinking it for diet benefits. I just plain like water!
Anyway, I recently wrote about this on RW. A friend has recently begun running and frankly, I HATE it. It's MY thing! She's already better at me than everything else. Why can't she leave this one thing to me? To make matters worse, she's doing her damndest to be better than me and will text me–out of the blue–little snippets like "I just ran one mile in 8 minutes!"
I have told her I don't like this but she continues. The rift between us is growing every day. I hate it….the fact she's so competitive with everything else helps nothing.
Guess what she did this past weekend? My husband and I went to a cabin near a big, popular state park over the weekend. When she inquired of my plans I reluctantly told me. Then the next day I got a text from her.
"Guess where we are!"
I didn't respond. Sure enough, later she emailed me saying she was in the same state park that day with her husband.
The woman goes to that park maybe twice a year! I'm not the catty type, believe me. But this woman is seriously rubbing me the wrong way….ok, wow, this is long and ranty! Carry on.
Oops, make that: I reluctantly told her.
Hi again!
Crabby, can I hang out with you and your buddies!?
Heidi, that woman doesn't sound like much of a friend
You think? When I confronted her about all this she got huffy and told me that she thought I was crazy.
Great topic and well written as per usual. I hope you allowed yourself a tiny smug smile when you wrapped up with the Catty/Cady wordplay.
Sabotage is very real and annoying, but it may be hard to determine what is "sabotage" and what is genuine concern. For example, a compulsive exerciser could dismiss comments about his exercise regimen as sabotage and use that label to rationalize or justify their actions in their brains and to try to justify it to others (that is example is not tacitly directed towards you….its actually inwardly targeted I'm afraid).
On an unrelated note, I'm recovering from an ED and have gained weight. My specific case, however, never had me more than a few deviation points off of healthy weights/BMIs, rather I was a classic over-exerciser/under-fueler, so its likely my innards were more screwy than my exterior (amenhorrea anyone?). Anyway, what I mean to say is that although I'm very pleased to have gained weight in the abstract sense of yes I know I should….I'm having serious issues actually visually seeing the weight gain as evidenced on the scale and in my snugger clothes. I don't want the new weight to go away, but I feel like I don't want to gain anymore. I've read of cases where sometimes people in recovery gain to the point where they then are back to trying to lose (sometimes now healthily, sometimes not), and I'd really prefer not to have to roller-coaster this. Thoughts anybody?
Heidi – am impressed you confronted your friend! You go girl! She sounds really passive aggressive and insecure. I agree with Azusmom – some friend!
Lily – Ooooh I must do a whole post on this one!! The short version: I so feel your struggle, girl!
To Lilly–I think the best way to combat this is to find a good counselor. Second, if you have a few good friends/family whom you are honest with, talk with them about it and go on a shopping date. If you're upset your clothes are too snug from when you were in full blown ED–that's part of it. Make it fun to wear and look GOOD in some new things. Nobody looks good in things that don't fit and getting rid of some of the clothes that trigger your thoughts or remind you all the time are not helping.
I think what you're going through is very normal. You are right to be asking for help. Now just to really follow through and seek it!
And for sabotage—I worked at Starbucks during grad school. The only thing I can say we ever did was if someone was REALLY rude and snotty—sometimes we'd decaf them. We'd never do the reverse–some people really can't have caffeine. However, we had one lady that came in, wouldn't talk to us because she refused to hang up with her bluetooth, slapped some money down on the counter (not in our outstretched hands), and then talked loudly at the end of the bar waiting for him drink. She was a regular and assumed she needed to not interact with us since we knew what she wanted—5 shots espresso over ice with carmel sauce on top (2 years ago and I still remember). So, I did decaf her once….
I don't think that's too bad…..!
I don't think I have ever done this and try to never even mention weight/size because I grew up with a sister who had an ED and am tired of her saying how much smaller I am than she (which is definitely not true). Women are too wrapped up in our shape and you can never really say/do the right thing –
Charlotte, I hope you don't mind if I link-drop, but the other day this posted over at Shapely Prose:
http://kateharding.net/2009/07/28/beauty/
The whole post (and the subsequent comments) were all about feeling inferior to other girls/women because of jacked-up body images. As you go down into the comments, they even got into the whole cultural "pretty" girls vs. "smart" girls thing. It was fantastic. The post alone made me cry (in a good way).
(FYI, that's a Fat Acceptance website, so if you hate FA, don't go there. I don't always agree with everything over there, but thought that post was beautiful. If you always see red on that subject though, you might want to steer clear.)
I don't think I've ever done it for malicious reasons. Although, I definitely have been on both the giving and receiving ends of "oh, just one little (candy, cake, beer, whatever) can't hurt".
I also don't know how I'd feel if I was no longer the crazy runner/sporty spice of my group. I love when other people join my world, but I'm very protective of not being outshined. Catty, yes.
And in a past life as a waitress, all I cared about was that you specified what you want, were nice, and tipped decently. If you wanted 3000 alterations to your meal, just don't get pissy at me if it comes out wrong. Chances are the cook was just being lazy. I special order a lot at restaurants and realize it's a crap shoot. I suppose the worst thing I did was eat off plates. French fry here, popcorn shrimp there… if your plate looks a little short it's probably because a hungry server working a double shift without a break is trying not to pass out and keep her energy up…
The cupcake thing would be cute….once. All year tho? That's just mean.
I've been in that position as a waitress…some customers secretly beg for extra butter 🙂
I was the one annoying all my frieds with "this second in my fitness knowledge". Thankfully they were very kind to me 🙂
We had an ice cream social at work on Wednesday, and I must have been asked by at least three women why I wasn't eating ice cream. It was like, if they were having some, they thought I should eat it, too. (For the record, I did have a few bites. Just not an entire big bowl.) 🙂