Girls will be girls

I really don't like girls. Sure I have friends who are girls, but they don't like girls either. I'm convinced that deep down, most girls don't like girls.\nWhy?\nIt's simple: Girls are mean. We're vicious -- we talk about each other behind our backs, we criticize each other, we judge each other and, more than anything else, we compete with each other. We're constantly clawing, whether to the top of some imaginary pile or each other's eyes out.\nIt's sad, really, the state of womanhood in our culture. It's a society in which we are taught that to feel good about ourselves we must tear down and cheap-shot each other at every spare moment. It's a society in which the use of the word whore is still common because we use it ourselves on a daily basis.\nAnd it's even more sad because of what we share. We share an existence that men can never understand. We sit and wonder if we'll be able to have the job of our dreams and still be the mother of the year. We refuse to believe that we'll be paid less than men for the same job and yet wonder if the lack of a key piece of anatomy will restrict our dreams. We wonder if we will ever meet our knight in shining armor while at the same time refuse to believe that we have to follow the social mold and get married ASAP.\nIt was this mutual understanding that inspired me for a moment, no matter how brief, in the third-floor bathroom of Ballantine Hall.\nIt was in the last stall of this bathroom that a shining example of sisterhood lifted my spirits a few days ago. A single piece of graffiti on the wall caught my attention: "I'm having trouble making friends. What should I do?"\nThe hundreds of girls who passed through that stall could've chosen to ignore that cry for advice, but a few didn't. A few offered help; they gave their advice for finding a meaningful connection in the world.\n"Make sure to be interested in the other person. Ask them questions about themselves." "Get involved in an activity. Meet people you have something in common with." "Try this in another stall. I think this bathroom advice thing is working."\nAnd it was. This girl who felt alone in the world had created a circle of support from complete strangers. She had inspired normally jaded women to help her find her place in the world. It struck me as the most raw moment of humanity I had seen on this campus for a long time.\nAnd then I became deflated. My pragmatic side got the best of me, and my hope for the future of womanhood quickly disappeared.\nIt occurred to me that while in that stall those women remained nameless and faceless, outside that stall, the world remained the same.\nMaybe those women who gave advice were the same ones that had socially rejected the girl seeking advice. Maybe the girl seeking advice had judged those women as whores while walking in the hallway outside that bathroom. Maybe one of them sat in class next to the other and wondered what or who she did last night.\nYou see, it's easy to aid other women in finding their way through this world when you remain nameless and faceless, when you don't have to risk anything. It's easy to support each other and our common experience of being women when there's no one around to see you let down your guard.\nBut outside that bathroom, life remains the same, and I still hate girls.