A sort-of pledge

I went for a jog yesterday – bare with me – and I had a whole load of work and life thoughts going through my head. But the running felt good. Good enough that I thought about posting a picture of the track up when I got home. And then I thought, if I saw that on someone else’s feed, more specifically, another woman’s feed, someone who I knew had a child or two, someone who worked, someone who I felt was more productive than me, I would think: overachiever.

Madeline Albright famously said, ‘there’s a special place in Hell for any woman who doesn’t support other women’. It’s one of my favourite quotes. So why, why, do I feel so borderline caustic when I see other women achieving their goals?

Maybe it’s partly because you never get the full story on social media. You only get the bits people want to share and it’s often the successes. It’s not human to be only successes and so it’s difficult to relate to.

But in all honesty, it’s probably just primitive evolutionary defensiveness too. We used to live in packs with an alpha female and competitiveness increases your chance of survival and reproduction. Simple. That, and it’s straight-up unnatural to be content for the same reasons.

But I’m tired of feeling that way towards my fellow women. I don’t want to have to reason with my anxiousness when I meet a new friend; ask myself why her hair looks so cool, how she motivates herself to exercise so regularly, why her life seems more interesting than mine.


I think up until now I’ve been a part-time feminist; or at least, my feminism is mostly lip service. I support others when I’m feeling together myself. If I’ve eaten well that day, got mascara on, done something productive and am wearing clean clothes, I’m all for supporting other women. But if I’ve had a slow morning, haven’t washed my face, can’t motivate myself to do anything but eat toast, then I’m afraid if you put up a photo of your fresh salad or your child in a coordinating outfit (hell, even just clean clothes), then you are going to receive a psychic barrage of petty cynicism.


And I’ve decided that I’m going to stop. It will probably take a bit of practice because my Facebook-instigated-Tourette’s is practically a reflex. But from now on, I am going to make a concerted effort to catch myself, remind myself that the woman I’m cursing is no different to me, and then congratulate her.