I initially started with the sentence, ‘as someone who has experienced bullying...' but then I realized that it doesn’t actually matter whether you have ever experienced bullying in your life, because everyone should have a basic understanding of what it means to be kind.
Yes, I have experienced bullying when I was at school, and it was horrible. Maybe one day I’ll go into it with you, but ultimately, it was a horrible experience. It’s not anything I stay awake at night thinking about, but I’ve learned that it does end up shaping your personality and social skills as an adult.
As I’ve gotten older, I’ve gained more self-assurance and become less of a people-pleaser, and I love it. If I think back to the person I was when I first started my career, I cared more about being accepted and liked by colleagues, whereas the person I am today is someone who is confident, kind, and likes to go to sleep at night knowing I haven’t hurt anyone’s feelings but equally haven’t allowed anyone to hurt mine.
One thing I can’t believe happens in the workplace as an adult is mean girl behavior. There’s so much talk about women supporting women, but the low-key mean girl behavior is ignored. I love that there are women who support one another within the workplace and in life, and I love how much it’s spoken about; however, in the background, there is also a lot of unacceptable and mean behavior that goes unnoticed. Maybe if we spoke about and understood the issue more, we could also help reduce it, or at the very least, learn how to spot the red flags.
I think sometimes this type of behavior can be so difficult to see because there are so many facets to it. It’s not just the obvious bad attitude or bitchiness; it can also be the strategic, low-key, manipulative moves and intentional actions between colleagues.
Sometimes you yourself will know that you have experienced this behavior as an adult in the workplace. However, explaining what happened out loud to your partner or friend may sound like there was nothing there, but you are convinced that it was mean behavior because of how it made you feel. Hopefully, this makes sense! What I’m trying to let you know is that if you have experienced this and end up questioning yourself because it sounds crazy when you say it out loud, I encourage you to trust your gut feeling. If you feel like something is off, then it most likely is.
Let’s take Selling Sunset, for example. If you’re up-to-date with the show, then you’ll understand how some of the cast have transitioned from good girl to mean girl behavior. It genuinely makes me so embarrassed as a woman to watch some of the women on the show behaving like mean girls at high school. I just don’t understand how grown-ass women think it is acceptable to treat other women with such schoolgirl behavior. It’s disrespectful and cruel.
What shocks me even more is that some of these women on the show portray a very different personality and different set of beliefs on their social media platforms compared to how they are behaving on the show. There is literally no point in talking about supporting women on one platform, yet on the other hand, you are bullying and shaming another woman in the workplace on reality TV.
Spoiler alert! There was a point on the show where Chrishelle made fun of Nicole for rearranging her face, and she did this behind her back and also to her face. On the reunion, they brought up this topic again, and Chrishelle said that Nicole had various non-invasive treatments just before the show. Nicole had replied that she had veneers done, some Botox, and also had some fillers dissolved.
The fact that I even need to explain what is wrong with this whole situation baffles me. Are you seriously telling me that none of the other cast members had any treatments done in preparation for being on a reality TV show? And so what?! If I was about to start a reality TV show, I would 100% get whatever treatments I wanted before the show.
What saddens me about this is that there are women out there who don’t have the greatest confidence, and a conversation like the one between Chrishelle and Nicole can be extremely detrimental. It’s telling women that there is something wrong with being open about these things.
I actually can’t get over the level of childishness at the reunion of Selling Sunset. I don’t know why I was giving some of the cast members the benefit of doubt, thinking that this is a reunion, so therefore they would all be sitting and chatting with each other, and I’m sure they’ve been embarrassed by some of the clips they’ve seen of themselves on the show. I was so wrong. The blatant whispering into each other’s ears and sniggering at other cast members throughout the reunion was ridiculous. I just can’t get my head around the fact that adult women behave this way.
Just so we can add a bit of variety here, let’s now discuss another show where I witnessed mean girl behavior. Love Island is a show I’ve only recently started watching, and I’ve watched only two recent seasons and am currently watching Love Island games. I mean, don’t get me wrong, it’s not a show that tests my intellect but it’s the kind of show you watch when you don’t really want to fully give it 100% of your attention because it’s ‘background tv’. My favorites on this show have to be Jessica for her hysterical outbursts, Cely because she is just so cute and seems like a real girls girl and Justine because she seems so down to earth. To be honest, all three of these girls were so nice to all of the other girls.
Spoiler alert: I just finished watching episode 18 where Cely gets dumped, and I could not believe the level of mean girl vibes towards her from others. She’s been nothing but nice to everyone around her, and I fully understand that this is all based on what I have seen, which is usually heavily edited content; however, she was heavily scrutinized because she was sad that she was separated from Toby, among other things, and then moved on to the guy that she was newly coupled with. Isn’t that the name of the game? Didn’t everyone else do the same thing? It’s one thing to have a guy come at you on national television, but to have a fellow woman volunteer her opinion about you just makes it worse.
I hope this goes to show that just as women can be victims to this type of behavior, they can also be villains in adult relationships. Unfortunately, this isn’t a topic most women are willing to confront. Having dealt with this type of behavior from a young age through to adulthood, I wanted to shed some light on the belittling and mean girl behavior that unfortunately still exists amongst women today.
It’s all good and well to post quotes on Instagram about women supporting women, but it needs to happen for real, in the workplace, at school, and behind the scenes.
Such s well written piece about the huge elephant that seems to permanently sit in m many women’s front rooms. It seems the nicer you are the more of a target you become . And isn’t thst a terrible thing!
It can be so hard snd confusing to understand the behaviour of mean girls because it’s behaviour most of us would never engage in. It leaves you shaking your head and doubting yourself with a resounding feeling of ... “ what?!”
As a high school teacher I see this way too often and, as you said, the ramifications it has on the mental health and feeling of self-worth of the bullied stretches well into adulthood. Mean girls are just plain awful
Interesting and thought provoking article Nina. I don’t have any strong views on the topic of mean girls, but it does make you think what the motivation behind this kind of behaviour is. It is jealously, insecurity, competition or is it FOPO (Fear of People’s Opinions) of you? Whatever the driver is, I think it’s a sad fact that they feel the need to act this way. For me I see it as a power struggle in the little group. If they can get everyone to side with them it must give them some kind of ego boost.