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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

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Original poster

To wonder what the hell is wrong with cliquey women and mothers ?

70 replies

Humpy84 · 07/05/2019 02:49

I’m from Australia ~ might be relevant in case I say minor things that don’t add up.

At park with DS almost 3 and my lovely friend and her children. Park is very spread out and kids running wild. I noticed immediately a girl that I went to school with from ages 10 to 17 who was very pretty and popular.

It was a cohort of 100 girls, many very attractive girls but probably only 20 who were in the cool group. Mainly due to being extroverts, very loud etc.

I tried to catch eye contact of ‘mean girl 1’ but she seemed to be in her own world. Her friend, also in my year at school, ‘mean girl 2’ arrives. At this point our children are playing in close proximity and MG 1 and 2 and Becomes awkward. I think about saying hello but am transported to high school and feel like I’m 12 again and that they should say hello to me. I am usually confident and say hello to everyone, don’t care if I’m the first one to say hello but this is so different. There’s just a general feeling that they don’t want to say hi and not making eye contact even when I try to. It’s a very friendly city and most girls from our school will say hi, even younger ones have said hi.

Fast forward 45 minutes of awkwardness and eventually my child is climbing on top of a fire truck that their children are on and bellows for me, Mean girl one and two are now an inch away from me and can’t ignore me, both say hello loudly and overly friendly. Completely fake and i feel like I’ve just walked into one of those clothes stores where they do the hard sell.

A five minute banter ensues and I am asked where I live within minutes. Mean girl two asks me my sir name and claims that she can’t remember. This is hilarious to me as they used to pretend to forget your first name as little girls and would repeatedly ask about 50 times to prove you were unimportant. I find it completely amusing that they’re still doing this. They wrapped up the conversation quickly and the dynamic felt exactly the same as when I was a teenager, like I was on borrowed time, they ended promptly and did a loud goodbye and “see you at next swings” like a couple of game show hosts.

I’m not at all upset about this exchange. I find it amusing if anything, these girls are not more charming, funny successful, glamorous etc, they’re both very thin but all in all just normal albeit loud and arrogant.

The rules of these cliques is so arbitrary and I find it so weird but also interesting. I would love to know what goes through their minds. Why are women like this ?

OP posts:

Monty27 · 07/05/2019 02:52

That's life....
Just stick to who you like and stay away from those that you don't.

IOnWednesdaysWeWearPinkI · 07/05/2019 04:54

I'm from Australia too, obviously it will be the same in other countries, but people can be very mean here. I'm quite shy and quiet but won't hesitate from saying hi or smiling at other mums but they act as if you are shit off their shoe sometimes.
We try to teach our children to be nice to one another but they take on their parents behaviour so that's why I think most children bully here.

Quite amusing how they pretended to not remember you. Oh well they come off looking like the idiots not you.

bibbitybobbityyhat · 07/05/2019 05:22

Is your point = people don't change?

toomuchtooold · 07/05/2019 05:26

I don't know why people do this but what I do know, if you want them to stop it, treat them the same way. If you see them, try and move away, make out like you haven't seen them, only say hello if you cannot possibly avoid it, and try and bring the convo to a close as quickly as possible. Their own massive insecurity means that as soon as you start treating them like that they'll read you as being higher up this ridiculous social hierarchy that only exists in their heads and they'll want to win you over. I mean the big disadvantage there would be that you would then have to talk to them...

Original poster

Humpy84 · 07/05/2019 05:34

@toomuchtoold that is so true, it’s laughable and I find it mind boggling

OP posts:

HennyPennyHorror · 07/05/2019 05:34

I live in Oz OP...but I'm English. I was just talking about this to my DH today.

DD is 11 and last year, lost her best friend to the "cool girls"

DD is much happier now with a new bestie and other mates but the "old bestie" keeps trying to disrupt DD's friendships.

She comes onto the scene...asking to play and pretending her "cool friends" are boring. Then she gets in DD's ear about her best friend or in DD's mates' ear about DD!

WHY do they do it? Who teaches them to be mean??

Chottie · 07/05/2019 05:52

There are mean people the world over.

OP - obviously MG 1 and MG 2 have not moved on from the playground, leave them there and don't give them a moment's headspace......

malificent7 · 07/05/2019 06:07

Ignore....not worth it.

chamenanged · 07/05/2019 06:08

Why are women like this ?

Giantsbane · 07/05/2019 06:13

In high school i was not cool. I had a hobby which meant outside of school i spent time with some of the cool boys which made me a few enemy's amongst the cool girls but in general they just ignored me. I didnt really care as I had my friends.

Years later I met my husband, he was from a different area but his cousin was a cool girl from my school. I was invited to her wedding quite early in our relationship and dreaded it as I felt like apart from my oh I barely knew anyone and had no support.

Turns out where I am most of the cool girls grew up nicely. Apart from 2/3 of them they were all really welcoming and kind and totally genuine. We're still totally different people but it was nice to get along.

However I have noticed around town and in tesco that the girls who in school who were say in the "mid tier" on the cool scale are now very stuck up and definitely wouldn't say Hi

whyohwhyowhydididoit · 07/05/2019 06:22

I agree that most women aren’t like this. Happy, confident, well adjusted women don’t feel the need to put other people down.

And don’t get sucked into playing mind games with them, that just brings you down to their level. Don’t let the behaviour of two random and inadequate women change your behaviour....or take up any more of your head space.

CSIblonde · 07/05/2019 06:24

They showed you who they were at school. Why would they change? And why waste time on them? They won't remember people they bullied either, because to them, those people had no value. I'd have found another part of the park as soon as I saw them, life's too short. As to why they are like that, pack mentality, round on the weakest etc, bullied or neglected at home, so taking back power by abusing peers, who knows...

pictish · 07/05/2019 06:29

Um...yeah. You do know they don’t have to talk to or be friends with you, the same as you aren’t obliged to strike up a relationship of any sort with them or anyone else for that matter?

I don’t know what your complaint is. You went to school with them a long time ago. Why would either of them go out of their way to include you, even nominally?
Maybe she genuinely didn’t remember you?

SkintAsASkintThing · 07/05/2019 06:36

I employ the eye roll for people like this. I'm good at it, my eye roll is so impressive it was once clocked halfway down a train carriage when I broke out ' the eye roll' for someone who was blocking the aisle pissing about when people were boarding. >
I honestly love a good eye roll. it says a thousand words. Anyways, roll your eyes next time and move on then leave them to pretend forgetting things in future. Much more satisfying.

chamenanged · 07/05/2019 06:37

Does it really make you a bully or an inadequate woman to forget someone's surname from secondary school in what's presumably been a number of intervening years? Or to ask 'where do you live' as part of a small talk exchange? OP admits that she didn't say hello but wanted to be said hello to. Eventually the women did say hello at what sounds like a natural point and chatted 'like a couple of game show hosts' - so in a friendly way then? OP sounds like totally the one with the problem to me ("they're both very thin but..." wtf?!)

pictish · 07/05/2019 06:39

And sorry...I’m not trying to be difficult. I just can’t see the issue. Not speaking to you wasn’t cliquey. I don’t make an effort on every outing to include people I vaguely know who happen to be in the vicinity. I talk to the person I have arranged to meet.

Oysterbabe · 07/05/2019 06:46

It seems like a completely normal exchange and I wonder how much of the perceived rudeness is in your mind.

pictish · 07/05/2019 06:47

And I certainly don’t remember the names, first name and surname of everyone I went to school with either.
No one does.

PaulHollywoodsSexGut · 07/05/2019 06:48

I’m watching this as I’ve not long moved back to my hometown and it’s a matter of time before this happens to me.

I’m now a mother of two with a third on the way; have a loving happy family and can say with confidence I have more inner peace than I’ve ever had in my entire life.

Yet I know if I was in the situation you describe OP it would really rattle my bars.

I don’t know what the point I’m trying to make it but I suppose I would feel almost pity for the women that haven’t changed from school in that situation. But also annoyance that you hope people wise up as they age (they don’t) so they don’t pass their BS down to the generation after.

Sadly if that were the case we would live in a world free of bellends and we all know that’s not true.

All we can do is try our best to shut down that kind of lame behaviour in our own offspring.

solittletime · 07/05/2019 06:53

Sounds like a scene from Muriel 's wedding!!

hellodarkness · 07/05/2019 06:54

I think your example is a poor one.

You criticise them for not speaking to you, even though you were in close proximity, and then criticise them for speaking to you in a loud and 'overly friendly' way.

Have you thought that they could be on here complaining that you were less than an inch away but didn't say hi until they did?

If you say they were mean in school then I'll believe you, but your example shows nothing of the sort.

JenniferJareau · 07/05/2019 06:54

Sounds like they were nasty back then and are still nasty now.

Tawdrylocalbrouhaha · 07/05/2019 06:56

They sound like arseholes. I can't remember the surnames of people I went to school with, but I don't make a point of declaring this!

However you may be giving too much importance to people you don't need to bother with anymore. You use the words amusing and laughable, but it is clear that in reality you found the encounter stressful and hurtful - you will probably feel a lot better if you really think it through, and next time just blank them or say hi but don't engage with them.

Coolcoolcoolcoolcool · 07/05/2019 06:57

How do you know they weren't just feeling as awkward as you were? You didn't say hello to to them either, until it was unavoidable, as you say. As for the name thing, as kids it does sound deliberate, but now? Do you really remember everyone's last name? Plus it might have changed with marriage.

I'm not saying you're wrong, maybe they were being mean, but you can't see inside people's heads. Maybe they're feeling shy/insecure. IMO people are much more concerned with their own stuff to be thinking mean things about some random woman they went to school with.

Even if they being mean fuck them, who gives a shit? They don't know you now, they're opinion doesn't matter.

P.S. I know some 'mean girl' men.

floraloctopus · 07/05/2019 07:06

I think it's a mixture of insecurity and self esteem making them behave like they are better than everybody else to bolster their own view of themselves. Either that or they are just arrogant and unpleasant.

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