Why I Don’t Like Girls
by Alissa
This probably sounds weird, but I really can’t stand to be around girls. I know what you’re probably thinking: "Wait, but isn’t she a…" Yes, that’s right, I am of the female anatomy, but that doesn’t necessarily make me of the same mindset of my fellow breasted ones. I just find myself unable to identify with them, let alone carry on a conversation longer than 2 minutes. It’s sad, I know, but there are some reasons that sex is not always synonymous with sisterhood.
Girls are mean. I’m not talking in just the "popular girls" sense, I mean everyone. When they get the chance (i.e. when they’re in packs), they’ll set on another girl like a school of piranhas on a bloody cow leg. I’ll admit it, I’ve done this too. Girls just like to pick apart each other’s little idiosyncrasies and label them faults. Most of my most painful memories are of girls’ taunts. Girls band together against a common enemy, and once they reduce her to tears and alienation they continue to beat her into the ground until she can no longer look another girl in the face again. The thing is, girls rarely stick together for something, it’s always against something.
Girls are cliquey. Girls make certain that everyone’s social status is established by age 12. It makes no difference if you were friends with another girl for years; when she is drafted into another social circle she is lost forever to your ilk. It hardly makes any difference if girls share similar interests, if she doesn’t share a similar wardrobe, she can never be a member of the same social circle. I’ve seen this happen with my friends. I know a girl who is a great athlete, on a team every season, is friendly with other team members, has a great sense of humor, but she is a tomboy, so she is never seen with them outside of the playing field. I was in elementary school with some of the most popular girls in my school, but since I didn’t shop at the Gap, I was immediately shunned. Even if a girl isn’t a snob, she segregates herself from others. She does all she can to be one type of person. In my school, all the girls that don’t shave their legs are friends, all the girls that are in band stick together (although that’s an entire story unto itself), all the girls that do drama hang around together. There isn’t much mixing between them.
Girls limit themselves. If a girl feels like she is acting too forward in a situation, she will immediately draw back into girly mode. Girls like to pretend that they are liberated, and perfectly willing to be intelligent, strong females, but when they are confronted with a member of the opposite sex, they revert to playing their sex role. Even when girls are friends with males, they feel the need to completely separate themselves. They can’t laugh at the boys’ sex jokes, because then they would have the wrong frame of mind for a girl to have. By doing this, they are limiting themselves in what they feel that they are allowed to achieve.
Girls that try to break away always do it together. Did you ever notice how all the counterculture chicks are their own little cliques? It’s like they can’t think of a way to find their own identities, so they subscribe to established beliefs. Like feminist riot girl type stuff. That’s why I hate girls’ zines. As far as I can tell, Bass Ackwards is one of the very few zines put together solely by girls that doesn’t make a point of addressing "female issues" on a regular basis. I did write a piece about double standards (BA #3), but that’s the only time. Do you want to know why we don’t do a girl zine? Some people think it’s because we both have short hair. But it’s actually because they’re boring, run of the mill, and could all be condensed into a few choice messages: "Pity me, I’m an oppressed, depressed, repressed, obsessed, suppressed girl who needs to write self-pitying poetry to gain self respect." (see Rena’s article) "I can’t spell gender specific pronouns, so I leave out vowels and add consonants to form the same word, like grrrl and womyn." This is just another way of confining girls into a role. Now, instead of being feminine, the girls are feminist. Why be forced to subscribe to a set of standards like that?
I say, don’t be a girl or a boy, be a person. Don’t group yourself based on secondary sex characteristics, group yourself based on what you like. Don’t hate other girls because they inadvertently make you feel inadequate and/or inferior. Don’t hate Alissa because her eyes are bigger and her waist is smaller than yours and don’t hate Rena because her hair is a prettier color and her boobs are bigger than yours (heh heh). And by all means, don’t allow yourself to become a bloody cow leg. It’s not a very flattering image.
Go back to Bass Ackwards #4
