The "mean girl" is a product of capitalism

[peppaistired]

I've been thinking about this for quite a while now. I am a feminist, I love women, I am a woman myself. I understand the battles we have to go through every day just for being a women. I defend women's position everywhere. However, there is one type of woman I cannot defend: the "mean girl".

Most women know exactly what I'm talking about. If you were a girl, a teenager, work with a group of women at work, you know the type of woman I'm talking about.

The one who makes you believe is your friend but back stabs you as soon as you leave the room. The one who bullies you in subtle ways so you never really know where you're standing with her. The one who's very charming with you in public, however, when the two of you are alone, she tells you horrible things. The one who looks down on you because you're not as pretty, as clever or as glamorous as her. The one who laughs at you because you're a bit clumsy, or naive, or doesn't know how to play the mean girl game as she does. The one who manipulates, cajoles, charms, has no back bone, but always seems to get away with it.

I thought and thought: "Where does this type of woman come from? How does she develop from being the manipulative girl to the boss from hell when she becomes an adult?

The more I thought, the more it seems to me that the mean girl is capitalism's bad smurfette. She's made believe from an early age that she's a princess. She consumes all that capitalism offers to her from a very early age with great delight and without much thought. She becomes a caricature of a woman from an early age, pursuing the ideal of the top model, the blonde celebrity, the glamorous girl, the corporate pawn, with a busy social life and a man to match. Of course, mean girls come in all shapes and packages, but there's something quite cruel and shallow about her, something that doesn't seem to be on women's side, quite the opposite. She always seems to have a gang of similar ones on her side, these are rarely lone fighters.

As societies become more industrialized, competitive, and corporate in values and ethos, it seems to me that this kind of woman/girl seems to thrive in it. And there's nothing to stop her.

These women are so detached from the things that make us wholesome, strong, and nurturing. There are a by product of a society that has gone wrong, somewhere along the way.

Women are so detached these days from areas of life that are predominantly female: the arts, physical and emotional expression, understanding of the human soul, nature and its circles. All the things that make us feel part of a fertile world of emotions, and feelings, and thoughts. A world where we plant our seeds and look after our children, give life and love to all others around us.

Women are great and have great potential for love, creativity and nurture. Capitalism in its stubborn chase of money, power and competitiveness is destroying little by little our female assets and powers. And then, instead of honest, wholesome, thinking, and feeling women, we get the toxic mean girls everywhere, spreading their nastiness, because it's the only way she can feel powerful in a world that has gone completely wrong for the female soul and spirit.

Any further thoughts, OP?

"These women are so detached from the things that make us wholesome, strong, and nurturing. There are a by product of a society that has gone wrong, somewhere along the way. "

I'm not wholesome, strong or nurturing, I don't think.
I hope I'm not mean either

It's all a bit airy-flowery around how lovely earth mothers are having their beautiful caringness squashed out of them by meany old capitalism and it's top servant the easily-adapting male.

An odd post IMO.

Women aren't "nurturing" or "mean" as some kind of either/or. Women are people who can exhibit the full range of human personality traits. Some are nice, some not. Some are sometimes nice and sometimes not (confusing, huh!). You know, they are fully developed people, not single-faceted caricatures based on hollywood/disney tropes.

So that's what I think

(PA mean-girl smileys?)

I think maybe the capitalism/consumerism issue might appear to be linked because egotistical, controlling type people are maybe also more likely to turn to material possessions to bolster their self-worth. See all the threads about controlling men who spend lots of money on themselves.

our female assets and powers - what are these?

Edith you beat me to it, I was just coming on to point out the Becky Sharp flaw in this argument.

Read some historical literature (Austin, Bronte, Alcott, Montgomery) mean girls (and boys) are nothing new OP.

BTW there is no 'golden age' of society, people have pretty much always thought it was going to the dogs

Ooh flora good question.

Flora, they are the ones we got when feminism Went Too Far. Along with the red bikini and blue cape.

I think that after so many struggles in the gender arena women do have a responsibility to care for each other, to look honestly after each other.

I have read eighteenth century literature, Bronte, Hardy, Alcott, Flaubert, Wollstoncraft, Balzac, Tolstoy etc and one thing that comes across very clearly is how powerless and dependent on men women were. And how better off we are in comparison. So why the need to be mean to other women?

I still don't think capitalism has empowered women at all. For the few women who might be in power positions, most women struggle to make it on their own in most extreme capitalist societies, especially when they decide to have children. And most end up financially dependent on men, at least for a few years.

I don't see anything wrong with being a feminist and accept that we're not perfect. That we still have quite a long way to go in how women treat other women.

Capitalism hasn't empowered most men either, to be fair.

I think you would be better off separating the two stands.

Anti-capitalism -check
Feminsm - check

You'll get in a pickle mixing the two up as while capitalism acts as an oppressive mechanism towards many women you need to look at all sorts of other things as well for the full picture.

Meanwhile feminists have a huge problem with loads of stuff that has fuck-all to do with capitalism.

I find your focus on "how women treat other women" weird as well. Most women I have met, like most men I have met, have been fairly bog-standard relatively decent people. Some people are arseholes, and some are lovely. I'm not getting your gist TBH.

OK Peppa if you've done the reading I'm not sure how you would come to your theory that 'mean' girls are the product of a Capitalist society.
As a PP said I think you may be conflating two distinct streams of thought.

Re your point about women being dependant on men in the past, that is as a function of our biology in the past a new Mother wouldn't have been able to fend for herself and would need other members if her tribe/family etc to support her.

Women's opportunities to gain independence and support their families are greater (in this country at least) than they have ever been. While obviously there is still much work to be done with regard to pay gaps, the glass ceiling etc etc it still has to be recognised that we have opportunities and freedoms far, far greater than our Mothers and Grandmothers ever did.

Is it helpful to bring up the gender of a "mean girl"? If someone is malicious and unpleasant does it offer any crucial insights as to the causes? Unless the mechanism of being female is somehow relevant to bieng "mean". Which is in and of itself a premise that is on very shaky ground. If one is a mysoginist then gender is relevant otherwise the person is just another asshole. The worry is you can obsfucate a legion of bad men behind just a single mean girl, if our current media is any indication.

I agree with your concerns about capitalism. Any system that relies on continued growth and consumption on a planet with finite space and resources is inevitably going to be unworkable sooner or later. Just consider the tragedy of the commons. What is needed is a more harmonious society, feminism is I believe one of the ways we can head in that general direction.

Do we remember the "mean girls" more because we expect that "boys will be boys"? (General "we" of course). In the same way that women are bossy when men aren't etc.

We're taught that boys are loud and boisterous and pull girls hair and girls are quiet and submissive, so when a girl breaks that idea and becomes 'mean', we notice it more.

Meanwhile feminists have a huge problem with loads of stuff that has fuck-all to do with capitalism

Loads of stuff? such as?

Capitalism, is it, the totality in which we live, we don't get to escape it anywhere. We can't shut our door at the end of the day and say ah, home sweet home. There is a dialectical and reciprocal relationship between the public and the private and feminists have been at pains to point this out, quite rightly.

Our psychology, our personalities, needs, desires and behaviours are socially constructed by the social relations of capitalism, whether that be class relations or gender.

So I find I have some sympathy with OPs musings, but I take issue with this idea that women are a special case. Have our personalities become more distorted, is there an essential female nature to which we can refer? No because nature is conditioned from the social conditions in which we live. So, at no time have women conformed to your essentialist check list of characteristics by way of human nature, although we have by means of social conditioning.

Well misogyny isn't rooted in capitalism. Capitalism is just another tool used to perpetrate misogyny. Take away capitalism and you'd still have the underlying misogyny.

Not that I don't think there is a huge problem for women when it comes to capitalism. There is.

"So, at no time have women conformed to your essentialist check list of characteristics by way of human nature, although we have by means of social conditioning." Agreed.

I agree the subjugation of women isn't specific or rooted in capitalism, but it is rooted in something very essential to capitalism, private property. Private property, class and the unequal social power that arises from this, is where the subjugation of women is born.

I think one of the problems, reading other responses, is that people's own reasoning is coloured by liberalism. Instead of talking in general terms people fall back on arguing about individuals, as though people are prior to society, rather than a product of it. That isn't to say that people lack agency, only to say that the scope and limit of that agency is dictated by what we perceive possible and the way in which we have been conditioned to think. The way in which freedom is sold to all of us, is freedom through the market. Its clear from the arguments about individual personalities that many feminists have been influenced by liberalism, which is a product of and politically allied to capitalism. This leads to women seeking equality with men of their own economic class, breaking down the category women as a class, it becomes meaningless.

Once this position is mainstream in our thinking, it is mainstream within our acting. It is this that leads women to be "mean" and competitive with other women. The weapons we choose are commodities, and what we seek is social power, this assuages and conceals our lower status with men.

The very last thing capitalism and liberalism allows, or can stand up to is any form of class analysis. In short, capitalism requires individuation and competition, and liberalism is the ideology that ensures we are always in direct antagonism to each other. Mean girl is the one who is completely interpellated into this, whilst the rest of us have a sense of unease.

I think that's the least of our worries. And the more feminist I've become, the more inspired by other women I've been.

really agree with this

Oh, and I am going to say something else a bit radical...

Talking in terms of "I" and "In my" are all very well and indeed the great work of radical feminism was to bring out the patterns and commonalities in women's lived experiences. But it only gets us so far, and is of itself a liberal way of thinking. Think the 60's vibe, turn up, tune in, drop out and get back in your own head, and the major push towards individualism born out of the rebirth of capital and its need for individual self-actualization, fragments society not just into sites of inter-sectional oppression but gives way to what Franco Beradi called semio-capitalism, where human emotions and communication are central to production and consumption patterns. The need for self valorization in post-industrial society posits each atomized individual as a product of his own labour. This is why "mean girl" is at the hairdressers, buying six inch heels and prada handbags, her higher status comes at a price; higher exploitation. Its clever really how we are deceived into thinking that we should labour upon ourselves, that we are the commodity to be worked upon. But that is where "I" and "In my experience" leads!!

Having drawn out the commonalities it then becomes essential to start thinking in more general terms.

Agree with Mini's post of 12.32.

OP, perhaps I'm not recognising the mean girl stereotype you are talking about, but I don't think people involved primarily in caring, artistic or spiritual areas are less mean or less immersed in capitalism. There is plenty of infighting and mean spiritedness in churches, art groups and educational institutions.

I think the latest wave of feminism has a duty to think about these issues: the way women treat other women in families, in workplaces, schools, and all areas of societies.

I understand that people are people and we all have complexities and contain extremes, and all shades in between, but then if it's not a gender issue when pointing out the way people undermine or mistreat people in every day life, then the battle against male behaviour towards women falls apart somehow: some men can be evil, others are wonderful human beings, some women can be mean, others are wonderful human beings.

We of course operate within a certain social and economic framework and the ways we behave towards each other is also influenced by that. In this country, extreme capitalism and the corporate ethos is destroying the fabric of communities, family life, the way we interact with each other. And in this context, some oppress and mistreat others as a result, being them men or women.

I am aware that there's very little I can do as a individual or a feminist on a large scale, but on a smaller scale I can start by treating my own gender, women, with the respect and consideration they deserve. If every woman taught their daughters, nieces, students, all girls and young women that we have a responsibility to treat each other well, and not be mean and nasty to each other, not only will the world at large be a safer, more reliable place for us, but also we will have a stronger ground in our fight against male/ female inequality and oppression.

Yes, I understand. But subtle bullying and harassment by females bosses at work, for example, can be very detrimental to female mental health too.

Peppa, what proportion of women do you find to be "mean girks"?

"But subtle bullying and harassment by females bosses at work, for example..." And subtle bullying and harassment by male bosses (of which there are many more)?

It's a trick of the patriarchy to get women to become preoccupied with the behaviour of other women, set us against each other. That way we ignore the behaviour of men and they get to carry on blaming women for their own oppression. For example you have been pretty mean about women in general on this thread yourself peppaistired. An us and them attitude. It is hard not to be like that. We are conditioned to be more critical of other women.