Do women have a jealous gene?
Barb S had come through a few life changing events. Now in her late fifties, it was time to focus on herself. Hiring a trainer was something she had never done before. She was nervous.
Her workout sessions were challenging. To her surprise, she not only rose to the occasion, she thrived on it. When she wasn’t in the studio building sweat equity with her trainer, she was on the treadmill at home sweating some more. In total, 28 pounds were left behind on the exercise floor.She went shopping; bought new makeup, changed her wardrobe and her hair style. It wasn’t too long though before her girlfriends were making comments. “You’re losing too much weight,” “You look too thin.” The comments were tinged with a shade of green.
What had Barb done? She had the audacity to buck their social pecking order and the hens were having none of it. “How did you feel when you heard those comments?” I asked her. “Disappointed,” she replied. Women can be so mean to each other. Over the last 27 years, countless women have come forward, deluged with unwanted comments from “well-meaning” friends. It would seem that although blue eye shadow and Farrah Fawcett dos have gone out of style, the mean girls from high school are still alive and kicking.
Oprah Winfrey commented that never had she received more hate mail in her life than when she lost weight. Female viewers had their nose out of joint that maybe O would think that she was better than them. The fact that O had enough money to single-handedly keep the U.S. economy afloat seemed to be lost on them. The fact that she was skinny was not. Skinny, the S word, even garnered more heat than the N word for Oprah.
“I think women have a jealous gene”, comments One On One client Theresa M. I couldn’t agree more. She adds, “Sometimes we women are genuinely happy for our friends or someone else but then feel jealous that we have difficulty losing weight and that it wasn’t us that lost all that weight. Also, women are typically never happy about how they look. We are hard on ourselves and very critical, so we think everyone else has a better figure than we do.” What do you think? Do women have a jealous gene?
