Mirror, mirror on the wall, who's the fairest of them all?

As much as I like to say that girls and women should stand up for, and look out for each other, I can't say that women make this easy enough for each other to practice in real life.

Why do most women, in their private lives, not naturally inspire any loyalty or any feelings of empathy or even a 'sisterhood' among each other? Why do we find it difficult to cheer for or celebrate each other's accomplishments? We seem to do it well enough when we are in large groups but not in our private lives with fewer people around.

I read or heard somewhere recently that women are quite detail oriented but usually miss the big picture. I wasn't very flattered by such a description.

Some days ago I announced quite gleefully to my female friends that my sister was to marry soon. I expected some congratulatory messages but I must admit myself to have been quite surprised on not receiving a single such message from any of the twenty or more girls to whom I spread this news and who have met my sister personally. A few days later, someone did respond to me, not with any congratulations or with any good wishes for my sister's happiness but with questions about who the groom was to be. I wrote back to everybody quite openly describing my bro-in-law. While I know that everybody read what I wrote, nobody bothered again with expresssing any good wishes. Am I wrong to conclude that we do want the scoop on each other's lives, but we can't be bothered with niceties with each other? We don't immediately root for each other's success or happiness.

I'd like to be clear that this is no grudge trip. I know that my sister's or my happiness doesn't depend on anyone congratulating us. I can't help feeling a sense of disappointment in women, though I proclaim myself to be a feminist. I can't help but analyze this. I feel that these small things translate to a much bigger apathy for each other in more serious situations when we are called upon to support a fellow woman in our individual capacity. We seem to nurse a kind of passive hostility towards each other which comes to us too easily.

A common behavioral pattern that I have noticed is that while a woman does take fairly quickly to a woman who she believes to be no better than her, it's always difficult for her to appreciate another woman who she sees as better in some way. It just means to me that we are always competing with each other subconsciously, if not consciously. We are always trying to not only look good, but look better, sound better, come across as smarter than the other girl. When a girl meets another girl, the first instinct is to quickly size her up. Is she fatter since the last time? Is her make-up better? Are her clothes nicer? Are the guys paying more attention to her? We frequently greet each other with a "You've put on weight" rather than a "how are you". In being unkind to each other, we are also being unkind to ourselves.

I recognize that feelings of jealousy and competition are quite natural, we are all animals of the world. But shouldn't the fact that we have a more developed brain and a little more understanding than other animals mean that we should train ourselves to be less hostile to each other?

As a last note, some years ago as a teenager, in a brief moment of anger, I broke of contact with a friend from school. I was meeting her after a long time and was very happy to see her. As she was leaving, I complimented her on how splendid she looked, her response to me was that I looked 'very shabby' and then without another word, she was off on her way before I could get in another word. I've gone back to think of it many times, thinking that maybe I was too harsh or too hasty in cutting her off but it wasn't the first time she'd said something like that to me. What I want to bring out is that she doesn't inspire any good feelings in me to go back to being friends with her. I know that this behavior will be repeated because she sees no wrong in it and tells herself that this is only a joke and not any unkindness. I haven't lost any self-esteem because of her constant insensitivity, I've lost a friendship.

My intention in describing these incidents is not to nitpick or split hairs. I am not trying to criticize every woman, there are far too many great ladies around to make this a general statement for all women. However, it is my experience that it's harder to make friends with women even when I make extra efforts to be friendly with them. This is only to point out that we could treat each other a lot better. If we want to be treated well in a society which we share with men, I think a starting point is to respect and value each other. One billion rising events are a great platform to bring women together to dance but to raise it from being merely a mechanical exercise, a mindset change is needed. There is a need to self-reflect that in this world, a woman is the most natural ally for another woman. We need to remind ourselves to be as instinctively nice to each other as we are to men. Our good behaviour shouldn't be limited to those women who are either much older or much younger to us.

P.S. I wanted to name this post 'autopsy' but then I remembered that I'd named my last one 'the cadaver'.