Women Supporting Women?

What’s real, what's fake and how to stop being a part of the problem.

Hey Yall!

Before we get to it, a bit of housekeeping.

In the interest of respecting your time and attention with the highest degree of care, I’ve decided to separate my writings by interest and topic and will be running TWO (weekly) newsletters from here on out.

Although I suspect that both will contain unfiltered perspectives and the occasional naughty word, here’s what you can expect from each.

• “Naked Truths” will house a collection of humble writings that fit squarely in the personal development category - sharing regular insights, failures, lessons-learned & strategies to inspire your path to personal excellence.

• “Red Flag Hero” will be a hub where Insiders regularly share knowledge related to health, medicine and the US health system with non-industry humans in plain language - so that patients and employers can make actual informed decisions in clinical and non-clinical spaces as it pertains to their health and health care.

If you are interested in both - WELCOME!

If you need to make adjustments to your subscriptions, please do so! (I might shed one or TWO tears, but I’ll understand) 😉

Now for the article…!

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Women Supporting Women?

What’s real, what’s fake and how to stop being a part of the problem.

A few years ago I was hired to be in a music video.

Here was the (totally unoriginal) storyline:

Famous, rich guy is 'a player' and is (somehow) successfully & sneakily dating 6 different women,

All at one time,

In addition to having a job,

And all while singing like an angel… blah, blah, blah.

Told you - classic story. Predictable for the venue.

BUT,

Here's the wild part...

By the end of the 4-minute song, the women find out about the deception.

And instead of tearing each other apart (literally or figuratively), they band together and confrontthe lying d*uche.

Which, you know… sounds cool, but never really made much sense to me.

Not because there’s anything wrong with it.

But because I've NEVER seen anything play out that way in real life.

THIS story is true & would have been way more believable

12-year-old Her: “Jessica only has clear skin because she has a lot of sex.”

12-year-old Me: “Woah, I’m sorry… WHAT?”

HORROR.

She repeated it again and added… “Yah, it’s totally true. I guess she doesn’t have much else to do with her time since no one likes her & she doesn’t have any friends.”

I was shocked.

We were in SEVENTH grade and Jessica had actually been MY best friend for years.

The “It girl” sharing her infinite wisdom (insert sarcasm and rolling eyes here) was a cheerleader, I’d been trying to get to know for months, and that I wanted desperately to be accepted by - at least enough to get an invitation to sit with her crew at lunch.

I don’t remember what I said in response. I didn’t pile on. Maybe I redirected… but I definitely didn’t tell her to “f*ck off,” which is what I should have done, or anything else that would make “42-year-old Me” proud.

I think about that day - literally 30 years ago - more often than I’d like to admit.

That was the day I sold my soul for a seat in a small plastic chair in a fluorescent lit room with flaking lead paint that smelled of sloppy joes. Pathetic.

But that’s just how easy it is to become part of the problem - a ‘mean girl’

And for many women, that’s not where it ends.

It wasn’t the first time that I was a part of something sinister propagated against another of my female species, (and it wasn’t the last),

But, over time, I learned.

• I saw the damage that resulted from sl*t-shaming & private stories shared.

• I saw the girls that cried in the bathroom & those who hid to avoid conflict.

• I saw those who became obsessed with dudes because anything was better than more war with their ‘friends.’

And while observing the destruction of my peers was bad enough to spark change, what really made it clear for ‘Teenager Me’, was seeing how talking sh*t made the sh*t-talker look to everyone else.

It became crystal clear to me that:

The weakest, most insecure people are always the meanest.

And I damn sure didn’t want to be weak.

In the 30 years since I learned this lesson, I’ve realized that not everyone is lucky enough to figure this out early on in life.

And like every last woman reading this, I’ve been on the other side of girl-on-girl bullying.

The quality & presentation of bullying changes over time, but admittedly in the hallways of our schools, on college campuses, and in the boardrooms of our workplaces, ‘mean girl’ behavior is alive and well.

Toxic behaviors manifest at every stage of life and career & I believe it's fueled by those who try to stifle the growth of others instead of pursuing their own path to personal excellence.

And perhaps it’s time to call out the bullsh*t and admit that many people still treat work and life like a “zero-sum game” as if in order for someone else to win, YOU have to lose.

But it's simply not true.

So much time and energy is spent busy blaming others or society while conniving to hold each other back until there are no resources left to invest in becoming the best versions of ourselves.

What if instead of assigning blame or shaming others we took a moment to question why we are tempted to do anything other than lift others up?

• Is there something about this woman that makes me feel threatened? Do I think she’s prettier? Smarter? Kinder? More capable? Lucky?

• Does sharing her private stories feed my ego somehow?

• What do I get from putting her down in front of others?

I’m sure that there are different questions - better ones, but those are the ones that come to mind.

Those are the ones that helped me reframe my thinking when I started looking to change.

The answers were revealing, and showed me what I needed to work on in my own life that would make me freaking unstoppable instead of just angry.

IDK how we do better as a group, or how we end up in a place where the rule is that we lift each other up instead of tearing each other down, but I have to believe that it starts with the self-reflection of individuals and open-discussion between each other.

So let’s start there.

Would love to hear if this resonates with you and how you think about ‘mean girl behavior’

Until next week,

Tiffany