February 2, 2015 • 37 mins
According to Shine Theory, powerful women make the best friends. But does success in life and career get in the way of healthy female friendships? Cristen and Caroline take a closer look at success, jealousy and competition among ladypals.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff Mom Never told You from How Stup
Works Not Come Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Kristen and I'm Caroline. And this week on the show
we're going to talk about friendship. And today we're talking
about something called the shine theory, which has to do
(00:25):
with women and success and friendship, which is going to
lead us into conversations about jealousy and competition within female
friendships in particular. Um. And the thing is, Caroline on
stuff Mom Never told you, we root for sisters doing
it for themselves and succeeding all the time. We're all
about that. We're all about uplift and empowerment. But what
(00:48):
happens when your friend becomes really successful, or if you're
someone who meets someone else who might feel out of
your league success wise? How do we deal with those
feelings of maybe unworthiness friendship wise, or competition or envy
that might naturally arise in these relationships. Well, first of all,
(01:11):
envy is, as we'll get into, totally natural, totally normal
might even have its roots and some sort of evolutionary
psychology purpose. Um. So, you know, when we were all
hunter gatherers on the planes and I was envious of
your spear. You know, that would encourage me to get
a better sphere myself. But it can sure create kind
(01:31):
of a sticky situation when it is in your friend group. Yeah.
And there's even a song about this, by the way,
for Morrissey fans out there. We hate it when our
friends become successful. If you want to just listen to
that while we're talking about this, be perfect. Um. But
first off, we thought we should kick off with some
wise words from a couple of the most successful women
(01:52):
out there, because they have some pretty insightful things to
say about how you should treat successful women or sucessful
people in general. So Amy Poehler, godmother of stuff, Mom
never told you in spirit, she doesn't know this, but
she is. Um. She was talking in her book, Yes
please about success. I mean obviously she's best friends with
(02:15):
the even more successful Tina Fey, and she said quote,
rooting for other people's failure does get in the way
of your success. So it's that whole warning against kind
of watch out for your own schadenfreud. Yeah, exactly, And
I mean I think that's a great attitude. There's there's
sort of an ugliness and I don't mean physical ugliness,
I mean an internal ugliness obviously to rooting against someone,
(02:37):
especially if they are your friend. And Taylor Swift, who
we've talked about recently and who we did mention quite
a bit about her very high profile lady friendships, she
talked too about how she surrounds herself with smart, beautiful, passionate, driven,
ambitious women, and she says other women who were killing
it should motivate you, thrill you, challenge you, and inspire you,
(03:01):
rather than threaten you and make you feel like you're
immediately being compared to them. Now some might hear them
and say, well, t Swizzle, it's so easy for you
to say that because you're so singularly successful. She's in
her own league, like no one can really compete with
her except maybe Katie Perry. But we're not going to
get ane of that. Um So what about in our more?
(03:24):
What about for for folks like you? And make Caroline Well,
I think we can transition pretty well off of Taylor
Swift because Marcy Bianco over at Mike was sort of
looking into Taylor's comments about not only friendship and lady friends,
but also feminism and saying that the message is quote
that to gain power, we have to champion women who
(03:48):
have access to it. And this is sort of the
basis for what an Freedman calls the shine theory. Yeah,
we've started in Freedman so many times on the podcast.
She is a freelance roter. You've probably seen her work
in New York Magazine. She writes regularly elsewhere as well,
and she also hosts a podcast called Call Your Girlfriend
(04:08):
with one of her very successful lady friends. And she
wrote this piece in York Magazine in two thirteen I
believe about shine theory, and it went viral. I mean,
it might partially be because it was headlined why powerful
women make the best friends, um, but it it definitely
started a lot of conversations. And one thing that she
(04:29):
says in this piece is quote, when you meet a
woman who is intimidatingly witty, stylish, beautiful and professionally accomplished,
befriend her. In other words, you know what I had
to do with Caroline. You know, surrounding yourself with the
best people doesn't make you look worse by comparison, It
(04:50):
makes you look better. And again, why am I sitting
so close to Caroline? Answer? She's shining upon me. This
is literally we're sitting in a long dining room, Davil
and Kristen is literally sitting next day. I don't understand
side by side, but honestly, it's cold in here, so
it's keeping me warm, right, And so she uses the
example of Kelly Rowland and Beyonce because you know, they
(05:11):
were all in the same group together along with Michelle
Let's not forget poor Michelle UM. But Beyonce of course
blew up and became the social phenomenon, and Kelly Rowland
herself has an incredibly successful career. I mean, like I'd
like to put out records and be a judge on
The X Factor if that's in fact the show that
she's on. UM. But basically, Kelly Rowland had to work
(05:34):
through her own envy issues with Beyonce and even wrote
a song about it about seeing your friend blow up
and becomes so successful and having to deal with those
kind of feelings of being left behind. But yeah, so
Friedman talks about how Kelly Rowland great example because she's
positioning herself next to Beyonce and she's all the better
for it, not worse for it. And when she published
(05:57):
this song that was autobiographical about her gel see of
Beyonce and coming to terms with that Beyonce then listen
to it and then send Kelly an email or maybe
a text message. I don't know how they communicate, and
he's like, Hey, that was really amazing and honest and
thank you for being you, And I wish I could
get a text like that from Beyonce. Maybe it was
a singing telegram the jamogram, but oh cool, alright, cool
(06:22):
as if it happened. Um. So, the basic idea is
that the people we surround ourselves with not not only
reflect who we are, but they should reflect who we
want to be. And so by befriending and bonding with powerful,
awesome women, you're helping build your own personal network, whether
(06:43):
that's for your personal life or for your professional life,
and that your friends should really encourage you to be better,
not drag you down. Yeah, and this does remind me
of stuff my mom told me when I was a kid,
in terms of you are the company that you keep,
so be careful of the friends that you make. And
it seems like a grown up version of that in
(07:04):
a way, because it's not only sort of holding yourself
to a higher standard by virtue of these powerful, successful
people holding you more accountable, but also allowing maybe outspoken
friends in your life to kind of call you out
when you need to be called out a little bit
for maybe going on dates with questionable people, or maybe
(07:25):
not being as ambitious as as you possibly could be
those kinds of things as well. Yeah, and she cites
Joe Freeman's nineteen seventy six essay on feminists not necessarily
doing this, not necessarily being supportive of one another. So
it's not like feminist or some magical unicorn group of
(07:46):
women who are immune from some of the less desirable
personality traits when it comes to friendship. And in that essay,
Freeman's sites and Selma Delolo, who said, quote achieving our
accomplishment of any kind with seemed to be the worst crime.
You're immediately labeled a thrill seeking opportunist, a ruthless mercenary
out to make her fame and fortune over the dead
(08:08):
bodies of selfless sisters who have buried their abilities and
sacrifice their ambitions for the greater glory of feminism. Wow,
and I mean and that rings true today as well,
not just within feminism but in our friendships in general,
and it doesn't help that. And we'll talk about this
more in deathIn later in the podcast. That a lot
(08:30):
of times of female friendships that have been modeled for
us in pop culture have always had those undercurrents of
competition and I hate to use this word, but cattiness. Yeah, exactly,
And I mean one important feminist figure who's always argued
for women supporting one another is Glorious Steinum and Kristen
(08:51):
and I heard firsthand gloriou stin Um talking about the
importance of even if you disagree with someone, supporting them
in their efforts to do bad her. Yeah, And going
back to Amy Poehler, she has a great one liner
about that, which is simply good for you, not for me.
And that's fine, and that's all it has to be. Um.
But the thing is, especially when we're talking about this
(09:13):
within the context of feminism, the more we get distracted
by fighting monkst ourselves and competing and fuming with jealousy,
it does give away ground to the status quo and
a patriarchy because it is a distraction away from doing
the work right exactly. Some people, though, did not like
this shine theory uh Slates Hanna Rosen was not a
(09:37):
huge fan of this idea because she saw it as
too calculating. She basically called it forming a strategic alliance
instead of forming an actual, genuine friendship. And she wonders whether,
according to this theory, that you know, if you've surrounded
yourself purposely with all of these powerful, really super ambitious women,
if one of them loses a job, goes through a
(09:58):
hard time, you finds herself in a funk for three
weeks and doesn't get out of her pajamas, do you
have to kick her out of your of your high
powered social group all of a sudden, or if or
if she shows any type of jealousy or weakness. Yeah,
funnily enough, she thinks of the advice is quote old fashioned,
a relic from the days when women didn't see themselves
(10:19):
as worthy competition for men, so they fought one another
for scraps, which is a pretty damning assessment. Yeah. She
suggests instead that if you're going to try to have
a strategy for your friendships, that you should try compartmentalizing
between your professional acquaintances and your actual really close lady
friends and then just recognize and ride out the waves
(10:42):
of envy as they come and go. So basically you
have these different friend groups for different purposes, one of
which is your true genuine group of friends. One is
the kind of friends that you have to help you
get ahead, um, and that you can use them to
sort of kind of let off steam about the other
group when you need to. While overall, I by the
(11:05):
shine theory, but there is it seems like there needs
to be this distinction between what the shine theory is,
which seems like it's more along the lines of friendly
networking rather than cultivating best friendships. Right, Because the feeling
that I got having read that and then reading Rosen's
column about it was that, Yeah, the shine theory is
(11:27):
great in that, yes, you should always encourage your lady friends,
and you should always strive to be the most genuine
supportive friend that you can and hope that you receive
that same treatment. Um in response. But yeah, I almost
feel like that might be a recipe for not so
genuine friendships and even the development of like a friend
of me relationship, which you and I have also talked about. Yeah. Well,
(11:51):
I was actually bene listening to call your girlfriend over
the weekend in Freedman's podcast, and they mentioned the shine theory,
and her co host said, oh, well, and you know,
I don't shine if you don't shine, And that kind
of hammered at home a little bit more to me,
of like, Okay, that makes more sense than a day
to day with your friends. Of like you, we want
(12:13):
to help each other be the best ladies that we
can be through our friendship. I get that. But yeah,
there's also the factor to where, especially if you're a
career oriented woman who spends a lot of time and
invest a lot of mental and emotional energy into her job,
I should just make this first person because I'm talking
(12:34):
about myself. I've found that that it's really important for
me to have friends where career is not a topic
that we even really go to, you know, like I
feel like we need a break from it at some point.
It is nice to talk to people with other passions
and with their energy being directed in different areas instead
(12:56):
of just you know, people exactly like yourself all the time. Yeah,
and I think you have to it goes both ways
to like to the point of what Hanna Rosen was
saying about, well, what if you have a friend who
lost a job. What if you have a friend who's
not so successful. Do you kick her out of the club? No?
And I think that it's you have to keep that
in mind too, when if you are the more successful friend,
how you treat and talk to your friends who are
(13:18):
maybe taking different paths than you are, and accepting that
as well. So it's a I mean, I like the
shine theory. I like the concept of the shine theory,
but as always, there's clearly more nuanced to it than
just make friends with powerful women, right exactly. Um, And
of course if you are the more successful woman, then
(13:39):
chances are some people in your social group might be
envious of the things that you've accomplished. Yeah, And there
has been a lot of research on jealousy and envy
in general. So first we want to share a few
facts about the purpose of jealousy why it exists, because
it seems like this, well, it is a negative emotion,
(14:02):
but it does have a purpose in the natural world.
And we're citing a paper by Sarah E. Hill and
David M. Bus called the Evolutionary Psychology of Envy. Right,
super interesting stuff that if you read it, and I
encourage you to do so, it makes you feel like
way less of a crazy person. Oh yeah, envy is
(14:25):
Envy is supernatural. It is I mean super natural to words,
not supernatural as in a deity. Um right, It is
innate and it likely played a role in like I
talked about earlier, getting the better spear, resource acquisition, and
human survival because it motivates certain things like submission, ambition,
(14:46):
or destruction. Basically, you choose between like I'm super envious.
That means I'm getting ambition, I might acquire something better
or find a way to do it myself, or you
know something terrible, like ah, you've got the better spear,
so I'll destroy yours that I feel better about myself.
But let's move away from spears and actually talk about
social groups, which is what we're here to actually talk about.
(15:08):
And envy has really been shown to lead to basically
talking smack about a person to your peer group because
that helps lower or it can help lower an opinion
of someone. So that's that's another like peer group focused
way of using envy as a destruction tool. But it's
(15:31):
a secretive emotion because we know it's negative and we
don't want to admit that we're being outperformed because what
does that mean? Envy is like Okay, you have something
that I really want, so I'm feeling envious of you,
and that might spark a whole slough of negative emotions
like hostility and insecurity and all this stuff. But I
don't want to tell this other person over here Kristen
(15:52):
had something that I want, because that just makes me
seem like, oh, well, I don't have enough for I
don't have what I need or should have exactly, which
is where shine theory would come in to say, rather
than giving into your insecurity, take advantage of it, befriend
make a you know, build the bridge between you and
that thing that you want. And shine theory jumped out
(16:16):
in this paper when they noted that quote. Researchers have
long noted that people reserve their feelings of enviousness for
those who are similar to themselves and for advantages that
are in self relevant domains. In other words, it's understandable
that we might have feelings of envy for the women
who are surrounding us, especially if they're in similar kinds
(16:39):
of careers or industries, because it tends to crop up
the most around the people who are the most like us.
Because that would lead us to think, well, you have
everything that I have. But except for that one thing,
why does your hair look amazing every single day? That's right, Chris,
I'm not talking about me. Yeah, and that hair thing
is not just a joke, I mean plays into an
(17:01):
evolutionary psychology theory on women's envy. In particular, we tend
to have greater envy and response to our same sex
peers being more attractive, whereas guys are more envious of
richer or guys with better resources. And that you know,
goes back to Okay, well what do men and women want? Traditionally,
(17:26):
and women are seeking to be provided for and men
are seeking a hot, fertile, young mate basically, I know. Yeah,
there's always there's always that factory and evolutionary psychology, it
seems like. But I did find it interesting that the
researchers mentioned that envy should peak during our peak reproductive years. Yeah, so,
(17:50):
because it's all about ultimately, according to evolutionary psychology, it
ultimately as is everything about babies. Yeah, fighting for resources
and those resources are firm, Yes, but there's there's also
been a lot of non evolutionary psychology research conducted on
jealousy and competition within female friendships, and it starts long
(18:15):
before our careers get off the ground. And one of
the most fascinating things to me about gender differences in
friendships that you see come up a lot in studies
is that girls tend to hold their girl friends and
I mean girl like young girls tend to hold their
girlfriends to hire standards, we think about friendships more often.
(18:38):
We expect more things like kindness, loyalty, and commitment from
our friends. We self disclose more to our girlfriends. I
mean think about I mean just the excitement of telling
or hearing a secret from a friend when you were
a girl. I mean, that was that was so much
of what it was. And while that establishes the foundation
(19:00):
for girl friendships being so incredible, it also sets us
up though, for chealousea and disappointment and competition too, because
we're so invested, right, And then that leads us to
what this study, which is in the journal Developmental Psychology
in two thousand five, was saying about how you know
girls are there's so much more of an intimacy level
(19:22):
and female friendship than in the friendships of young boys,
to the point where the interference of a third party
tends to be a significant source of tension between friends
and the primary basis for the breakup of friendships. Yeah,
and researchers usually anticipate jealousy interfering in girl friendships just
(19:43):
because we have quote deeper, more intimate friendships. And they
also went on to say, in this study, quote girls
in general reported higher levels of jealousy surrounding friends. So
this is something that we're dealing with in our formative years. Um.
But interesting to that gender difference might also be due
to a gendered stigma of jealousy being thought of as
(20:08):
more of a feminine emotion, probably because, like we were
talking about with the evolutionary psychology of envy, if you
express envy or jealousy, you're sort of tipping your hand
a little bit right, signaling weakness. So, for instance, if
boys are feeling jealous within the confines of these friendships,
they have a tendency to just say that they're upset
versus they're jealous of something. But Caroline, this is dealing
(20:31):
with younger girls. What then happens when puberty hits and
sexiness walks in the room. Oh my god, I feel
like everybody could probably guess the answer to this. Uh,
nothing good, nothing good, nothing good happens. Um. I mean,
it's so interesting. The studies that we read that basically
threw a sexy lady into the mix of two female
(20:55):
friends showed over and over again that if a sexy
lady walks in the room and encounters two female friends,
the minute she walks back out, the two female friends
are going to be like, am I God, did you
see her? I bet she's just here to bang the professor.
Whereas if a woman with like her hair and a
nod on the top of her head, wearing a T
shirt and pants, you know, if I walk into the room,
(21:17):
if I walk into the room, they don't think anything
of it at all. Yeah, yeah, there's no, we're not
We're not bringing sexy back. But this the fascinating thing, though, too,
was that only until recently, relatively recently, scientists didn't even
really understand the entire concept of female competition. It was
(21:39):
assumed to be more of a male thing, obviously relating
to gendered patterns of aggression and violence and adding a
little more complexity to this as well. Uh. The New
York Times was reporting on how female competition used to
be sort of a giant question mark because past evolutionary
analysis thought that our ancient poligonus societies just eliminated any
(22:05):
compulsion for female mate competition because hey, the hottest dudes
just have multiple lives, no big deal. But more recent
analysis has opened up that scenario a little bit for
female competition because they now think, well, women probably would
have still competed for the best resourced sperm contributor. So
(22:26):
it's it's all very romantic, it's very egalitarian, it's very progressive. Um,
but not joking. Female competition has only recently been studied,
and it is once you throw that sexiness into the
equation that it does come out, unfortunately, at least according
to the limited researches out there in the form of
(22:46):
female to female solt shaming. Yeah, so, researcher Sarah B.
Hurdie has is researching female competition, and she points out
that it's only since the nineteen eighties, which is really
when more and more women started getting into stem fields
that people turn their attention to studying women's competition and
and uh, female on female competition and aggression. Um. Of course,
(23:09):
as we've talked about before, female on female aggression does
tend to be a little more passive aggressive, a little
less actually aggressive aggressive or especially physical. I mean we
have to protect our delicate selves, right, Yeah, we're less
likelier to to punch each other. Yeah, don't punch me
in the baby maker, because it's got to be making
all those babies, all that sperm I acquired with my
(23:30):
new spear, and not in the face, because how will
I find the best sperm contributor. Instead, I'm just gonna
say horrible things about you behind your back, right, because
that goes back to the whole envy discussion of talking
about someone behind her back to basically take her down
brick by brick, behind the scenes, instead of just doing
it to her face. Yeah, which is really no less damaging,
(23:52):
arguably even more damaging than punching someone in the you.
The you, and this is our a according to Dr Hurdie,
that women limit access by maintaining advantage in the negotiation
of the resource, the resource being our ability to find
(24:13):
a decent person to procreate with. Um. But moving on
from that. Joyce Benison at Emmanuel College has also studied
female jealousy and competition, and she identified to Psychology Today
three unique characteristics of jealousy and women. One veiled aggression
rather than physical confrontation. We've already covered that too. High
(24:36):
status women are less motivated to invest in other women,
and women who try to distinguish or promote themselves threaten
other women and will encounter hostility and enter shine theory
needing to come into play, and the three social exclusion
to protect against potential competitors. So I mean we we
(24:58):
played dirty, but I mean this this supposedly like natural
drive to be doing all of this definitely follows us
into our careers and jealousy reflecting gender dynamics in the
workplace because when you think about it, there are so
few women as CEOs in the boardroom, in high power positions.
(25:20):
So hopefully we're not fighting for sperm in the office,
but we're fighting for very limited positions of power, and
so that still will involve those more the more veiled aggression,
maybe the feelings of envy and trying to take someone
down behind the scenes so that you're still being perceived
(25:40):
as like, oh, I'm a team player at work. Yeah,
but I do think one of the most damaging ways
if you are a woman vying for that limited seat,
I mean stepping on the backs of other women in
order to get there is I mean, I guess if
you're out for yourself, okay, but you're not helping other
women in the process. And and the fact the matter
(26:02):
is there's some people for which they don't care, and
they don't care about that at all. Every woman on
a reality show. I love those montages on YouTube of
of women going I'm not here to make friends. Yeah,
because I mean there is I think still this assumption
that women are going to naturally be competitive with each
other and be jealous of each other, and shine theory
(26:22):
does tip it on its head a bit of saying, hey,
you know, we can be successful, we can also be friendly,
and we can also maybe buck these perceptions that women
in positions of leadership and power are aggressive and angry
and unfriendly. Yeah, because that doesn't help at all either now,
And neither does the loneliness that comes when you're looking
at social media for hours on end and some woman
(26:45):
on social media's posting pictures of her trip to Bali.
I'm not speaking from person or just some dinner parties
you weren't invited to, not speaking from personal experience out
of their caroline. Yeah, social media, I mean we're gonna
we're gonna mend and social media because women spend a
lot of time on social media and as probably every
(27:07):
every listener has seen a trend piece on this, there
have been so many studies now linking Facebook and Instagram
in particular to feelings of loneliness, lower self worth, and
jealousy because we're seeing we're seeing things that we don't have.
I mean, yes, these are images that are curated and
filtered and cleverly captioned we hope to, you know, make
(27:31):
your life look as great as possible. But still, but
it's weird. It's almost like it's almost like the way
that fake sugar like will never satisfy your brain because
your brain wants real sugar and so it keeps searching.
It's it's almost like you're you're in a fake competition
with other women on social media when you look at
their amazing pictures of their trip or their dinner or
their vacation or husband or whoever whatever. Because so envy
(27:55):
is supposed to spark ambition, right, you see something you
want and you're like, I've got to figure out a
way to get that for myself and do do well
for myself. But the image that people present of themselves
on social media, it's not anywhere close to being real. Yeah,
you might post pictures of an amazing trip you took,
but that doesn't cover up like maybe you had a
(28:16):
bad day, maybe you're not feeling good about yourself. Maybe
you yourself are insecure, and so it's almost like people
are envious of something that they don't fully grasp and
so that like breeds this whole feeling of insecurity and
instability and envy when really you should just be congratulating
on your your friend on a good trip and saying, hey,
how are you doing? Yeah? I mean And when it
comes to that realness factor on social media and are
(28:38):
curated images, I would like to highlight that my Twitter
avatar that is fake blood on my face, not real, ladies.
You don't need to be envious. Um. And also I
think that you just came up with something that we
should call the splendid theory. So yeah, hello, shine theory, meat,
(28:58):
splendid theory and together what would that make fools gold?
But before we close out this conversation, we did want
to take a look at television because we mentioned earlier
about how media representations of female friendships, particularly in movies
and television often, you know, follow the assumption that we
(29:22):
all secretly hate each other and they're all freenemies. And
there is still a lot of that on TV, just
look at the Real Housewives franchise and The Bachelor. But
I think in some ways it has gotten better. We
do have some examples of uh, female friendships on TV.
And I'm only focusing on TV just because there's not
(29:43):
even time to get into film, but there are examples
of friendships where shine theory is at work, not just
in a sense of a career, but supporting people through
life decisions too. And I think that that's something especially
for me as an adult woman with my friends who
have now had years and years and years too. It's
it's not just the career success that can stoke envy,
(30:06):
but it's also the life success. We're all starting to
hit the milestones you're starting to get, like engagements and
marriages and pregnancies and divorce and that, and that plays
a role in things as well. Yeah, it is refreshing
to see depictions of female friendship that seemed very genuine.
I mean, take a show like Girls which wait, don't
turn off the podcast. I know not everybody is a
(30:28):
fan but when you have a show like Girls, I
feel like that's still depicting genuine female friendships and all
of the messiness that can come along with it. These
women are being pitted against each other. There's not cattiness
per se, but there's genuine love and support, just on
the same token as there is insecurity and sort of
measuring up against one another. Yeah, and Broad City. Hello,
(30:52):
Is there a more dedicated duo of female friends on
prime time? I don't think so, because I think that
Alanna would would murder for Abby, and she would also
marry her if she could, if Abbie would have her
um and then even to a Sex in the City.
You know, those friendships showed time and again lots of
(31:14):
support through milestones and successes and even through failures too,
And I feel like in that way, Sex in the
City was a healthy model Parks and recreation. Lesley notes
undying love of Anne right, And I think one of
my favorites, even though I hate this show now, is
Grey's Anatomy the friendship between Meredith and Christina, because I
(31:36):
remember so clearly the episode where Christina said that Meredith
was her person, because I was like, ah, there it is.
That's my friendship reflected in these two fictional characters, because
I feel that way about a couple of ladies too,
and it's like they're they're my my people, my tribe,
my my people, who will tell me when I'm full
(31:57):
of crap, but who will also support me unconditioned only.
And an older sitcom as well that depicts strong female
friendships through life events is Girl Friends. As well as
Awkward Black Girl. You have the Gilmore Girls, arguably, which
I feel like that's a little bit of a stretch,
and also Buffy the Vampire Slayer. We've got some strong
female friendships in there as well, so there's some good
(32:19):
modeling going on. And I do think that that for
the TV shows we just mentioned that are on the
air right now, it's interesting that most of them are
created by women. Yeah. I mean that's the importance of representation.
When people talk about why is it important to get
women in X Y Z field, this is a great example.
(32:43):
You get more women's perspectives in the TV writer's room,
and then you get more realistic depictions of actual women. Yeah,
and I think that those depictions are important. I think
it is important, especially for girls to see I mean
not that girls are sitting down and watching Gray's Anatomy.
Do girls watch Gray's Anatomy? I don't know. I don't know,
(33:06):
but I think just generally, it's so important for younger
girls to see healthy models of female friendship because from
the get go, leased according to studies and according to
my experience when I was a girl, we invest so
much in our friends, and our friends means so much
to us, and when they break our hearts, it's like
no other heartbreak. And I feel like this follows us
(33:30):
in Morrison evolves as we get older, and I really
love most of all Amy Poehler's advice of just don't
root for other people's failure. You know something's not for you,
that's fine, good for her, not for me exactly. So
let's hear from some listeners. When do you think about
the shine theory? How how has success and competition influenced
(33:55):
your closer friendships? And do you think that you should
make with powerful people or is that just kind of networking?
And guys, we want to hear from you two. I
know this was lady focused conversation, but we always want
to hear your thoughts as well. Mom Stuff at how
stuffwork dot com is our email address. You can also
tweet us and mom Stuff podcast and messages on Facebook,
(34:17):
and we've got a couple of messages this year with
you all right now, Well, I have a letter here
from Samantha about our Underpens episode. She says, I'm a
costume designer out in Seattle, and when it comes to
historical plays, the right undergarments are essential. While I was
(34:38):
interesting to hear about the political and social feelings on underwear,
I was saddened that you barely touched on the function
of these garments. If it weren't for courses, many Victorian
and Edwardian dresses would look awful since the dresses themselves
were never made a fabric that could hold structure or form.
You mentioned that once World War Two was over, we
go back to constraining undergarments like bullet FROs, hurdles, and petticoats,
(35:02):
but the shape and design of those dresses wouldn't be
fully realized because without those bases it would look like
a totally different dress. Even now, we used banks to
get the garments we wear to look like they are
intended to look. I love the podcast and thanks for
helping me become a better informed feminist keep up the
good work. Well, thank you, Samantha. Thank you for filling
(35:23):
us in on some historical details. And Samantha and some
other listeners have also filled us in on mispronunciation of
the word chemise, which I woefully misled Caroline into thinking
it was pronounced camise. So my since serrious apologies. I
don't know what I thought was. The thought was camis
(35:45):
always started that way in my head. It was just
like that Sarah c Anderson comic. Yeah. Well, I know
have a letter from Sarah about our literacy podcast and
Colombo and it made me laugh. So here it is.
She said, love your podcast. I listened to it all
the time at work. Thank you for all your hard work.
I was just listening to the Clittereste podcast. And I
know you were thinking that Columbo discovering the clitterest reminded
(36:09):
you of Columbus, but I humorously started thinking of Detective
Columbo played by Peter Falk in the nineteen six eight
TV show Columbo, which side note I totally watched all
the time with my parents. I kept inwardly laughing every
time I thought of his catchphrase just one thing I
don't understand and applying it to the clitterest. Nothing usually
(36:32):
groundbreaking to actually tell you about the episode other than
that I enjoyed it and the thought of Columbo the
Detective was super funny to me. I hope it made
you laugh too, and it did, Sarah, So thank you
and thanks everybody else who's written into us. Mom Stuff
at hou sufforks dot com is our email address and
for links to all of our social media as well
as all of our blogs, videos, and podcasts, including this
(36:54):
one with links to and Friedman's Peace about Shine theory
so you can read along. Head on over to stuff
mo I've Never Told You dot com for more on
this and thousands of other topics. Is it how Stuff
Works dot com
Welcome to Stuff Mom Never told You from How Stup
Works Not Come Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Kristen and I'm Caroline. And this week on the show
we're going to talk about friendship. And today we're talking
about something called the shine theory, which has to do
(00:25):
with women and success and friendship, which is going to
lead us into conversations about jealousy and competition within female
friendships in particular. Um. And the thing is, Caroline on
stuff Mom Never told you, we root for sisters doing
it for themselves and succeeding all the time. We're all
about that. We're all about uplift and empowerment. But what
(00:48):
happens when your friend becomes really successful, or if you're
someone who meets someone else who might feel out of
your league success wise? How do we deal with those
feelings of maybe unworthiness friendship wise, or competition or envy
that might naturally arise in these relationships. Well, first of all,
(01:11):
envy is, as we'll get into, totally natural, totally normal
might even have its roots and some sort of evolutionary
psychology purpose. Um. So, you know, when we were all
hunter gatherers on the planes and I was envious of
your spear. You know, that would encourage me to get
a better sphere myself. But it can sure create kind
(01:31):
of a sticky situation when it is in your friend group. Yeah.
And there's even a song about this, by the way,
for Morrissey fans out there. We hate it when our
friends become successful. If you want to just listen to
that while we're talking about this, be perfect. Um. But
first off, we thought we should kick off with some
wise words from a couple of the most successful women
(01:52):
out there, because they have some pretty insightful things to
say about how you should treat successful women or sucessful
people in general. So Amy Poehler, godmother of stuff, Mom
never told you in spirit, she doesn't know this, but
she is. Um. She was talking in her book, Yes
please about success. I mean obviously she's best friends with
(02:15):
the even more successful Tina Fey, and she said quote,
rooting for other people's failure does get in the way
of your success. So it's that whole warning against kind
of watch out for your own schadenfreud. Yeah, exactly, And
I mean I think that's a great attitude. There's there's
sort of an ugliness and I don't mean physical ugliness,
I mean an internal ugliness obviously to rooting against someone,
(02:37):
especially if they are your friend. And Taylor Swift, who
we've talked about recently and who we did mention quite
a bit about her very high profile lady friendships, she
talked too about how she surrounds herself with smart, beautiful, passionate, driven,
ambitious women, and she says other women who were killing
it should motivate you, thrill you, challenge you, and inspire you,
(03:01):
rather than threaten you and make you feel like you're
immediately being compared to them. Now some might hear them
and say, well, t Swizzle, it's so easy for you
to say that because you're so singularly successful. She's in
her own league, like no one can really compete with
her except maybe Katie Perry. But we're not going to
get ane of that. Um So what about in our more?
(03:24):
What about for for folks like you? And make Caroline Well,
I think we can transition pretty well off of Taylor
Swift because Marcy Bianco over at Mike was sort of
looking into Taylor's comments about not only friendship and lady friends,
but also feminism and saying that the message is quote
that to gain power, we have to champion women who
(03:48):
have access to it. And this is sort of the
basis for what an Freedman calls the shine theory. Yeah,
we've started in Freedman so many times on the podcast.
She is a freelance roter. You've probably seen her work
in New York Magazine. She writes regularly elsewhere as well,
and she also hosts a podcast called Call Your Girlfriend
(04:08):
with one of her very successful lady friends. And she
wrote this piece in York Magazine in two thirteen I
believe about shine theory, and it went viral. I mean,
it might partially be because it was headlined why powerful
women make the best friends, um, but it it definitely
started a lot of conversations. And one thing that she
(04:29):
says in this piece is quote, when you meet a
woman who is intimidatingly witty, stylish, beautiful and professionally accomplished,
befriend her. In other words, you know what I had
to do with Caroline. You know, surrounding yourself with the
best people doesn't make you look worse by comparison, It
(04:50):
makes you look better. And again, why am I sitting
so close to Caroline? Answer? She's shining upon me. This
is literally we're sitting in a long dining room, Davil
and Kristen is literally sitting next day. I don't understand
side by side, but honestly, it's cold in here, so
it's keeping me warm, right, And so she uses the
example of Kelly Rowland and Beyonce because you know, they
(05:11):
were all in the same group together along with Michelle
Let's not forget poor Michelle UM. But Beyonce of course
blew up and became the social phenomenon, and Kelly Rowland
herself has an incredibly successful career. I mean, like I'd
like to put out records and be a judge on
The X Factor if that's in fact the show that
she's on. UM. But basically, Kelly Rowland had to work
(05:34):
through her own envy issues with Beyonce and even wrote
a song about it about seeing your friend blow up
and becomes so successful and having to deal with those
kind of feelings of being left behind. But yeah, so
Friedman talks about how Kelly Rowland great example because she's
positioning herself next to Beyonce and she's all the better
for it, not worse for it. And when she published
(05:57):
this song that was autobiographical about her gel see of
Beyonce and coming to terms with that Beyonce then listen
to it and then send Kelly an email or maybe
a text message. I don't know how they communicate, and
he's like, Hey, that was really amazing and honest and
thank you for being you, And I wish I could
get a text like that from Beyonce. Maybe it was
a singing telegram the jamogram, but oh cool, alright, cool
(06:22):
as if it happened. Um. So, the basic idea is
that the people we surround ourselves with not not only
reflect who we are, but they should reflect who we
want to be. And so by befriending and bonding with powerful,
awesome women, you're helping build your own personal network, whether
(06:43):
that's for your personal life or for your professional life,
and that your friends should really encourage you to be better,
not drag you down. Yeah, and this does remind me
of stuff my mom told me when I was a kid,
in terms of you are the company that you keep,
so be careful of the friends that you make. And
it seems like a grown up version of that in
(07:04):
a way, because it's not only sort of holding yourself
to a higher standard by virtue of these powerful, successful
people holding you more accountable, but also allowing maybe outspoken
friends in your life to kind of call you out
when you need to be called out a little bit
for maybe going on dates with questionable people, or maybe
(07:25):
not being as ambitious as as you possibly could be
those kinds of things as well. Yeah, and she cites
Joe Freeman's nineteen seventy six essay on feminists not necessarily
doing this, not necessarily being supportive of one another. So
it's not like feminist or some magical unicorn group of
(07:46):
women who are immune from some of the less desirable
personality traits when it comes to friendship. And in that essay,
Freeman's sites and Selma Delolo, who said, quote achieving our
accomplishment of any kind with seemed to be the worst crime.
You're immediately labeled a thrill seeking opportunist, a ruthless mercenary
out to make her fame and fortune over the dead
(08:08):
bodies of selfless sisters who have buried their abilities and
sacrifice their ambitions for the greater glory of feminism. Wow,
and I mean and that rings true today as well,
not just within feminism but in our friendships in general,
and it doesn't help that. And we'll talk about this
more in deathIn later in the podcast. That a lot
(08:30):
of times of female friendships that have been modeled for
us in pop culture have always had those undercurrents of
competition and I hate to use this word, but cattiness. Yeah, exactly,
And I mean one important feminist figure who's always argued
for women supporting one another is Glorious Steinum and Kristen
(08:51):
and I heard firsthand gloriou stin Um talking about the
importance of even if you disagree with someone, supporting them
in their efforts to do bad her. Yeah, And going
back to Amy Poehler, she has a great one liner
about that, which is simply good for you, not for me.
And that's fine, and that's all it has to be. Um.
But the thing is, especially when we're talking about this
(09:13):
within the context of feminism, the more we get distracted
by fighting monkst ourselves and competing and fuming with jealousy,
it does give away ground to the status quo and
a patriarchy because it is a distraction away from doing
the work right exactly. Some people, though, did not like
this shine theory uh Slates Hanna Rosen was not a
(09:37):
huge fan of this idea because she saw it as
too calculating. She basically called it forming a strategic alliance
instead of forming an actual, genuine friendship. And she wonders whether,
according to this theory, that you know, if you've surrounded
yourself purposely with all of these powerful, really super ambitious women,
if one of them loses a job, goes through a
(09:58):
hard time, you finds herself in a funk for three
weeks and doesn't get out of her pajamas, do you
have to kick her out of your of your high
powered social group all of a sudden, or if or
if she shows any type of jealousy or weakness. Yeah,
funnily enough, she thinks of the advice is quote old fashioned,
a relic from the days when women didn't see themselves
(10:19):
as worthy competition for men, so they fought one another
for scraps, which is a pretty damning assessment. Yeah. She
suggests instead that if you're going to try to have
a strategy for your friendships, that you should try compartmentalizing
between your professional acquaintances and your actual really close lady
friends and then just recognize and ride out the waves
(10:42):
of envy as they come and go. So basically you
have these different friend groups for different purposes, one of
which is your true genuine group of friends. One is
the kind of friends that you have to help you
get ahead, um, and that you can use them to
sort of kind of let off steam about the other
group when you need to. While overall, I by the
(11:05):
shine theory, but there is it seems like there needs
to be this distinction between what the shine theory is,
which seems like it's more along the lines of friendly
networking rather than cultivating best friendships. Right, Because the feeling
that I got having read that and then reading Rosen's
column about it was that, Yeah, the shine theory is
(11:27):
great in that, yes, you should always encourage your lady friends,
and you should always strive to be the most genuine
supportive friend that you can and hope that you receive
that same treatment. Um in response. But yeah, I almost
feel like that might be a recipe for not so
genuine friendships and even the development of like a friend
of me relationship, which you and I have also talked about. Yeah. Well,
(11:51):
I was actually bene listening to call your girlfriend over
the weekend in Freedman's podcast, and they mentioned the shine theory,
and her co host said, oh, well, and you know,
I don't shine if you don't shine, And that kind
of hammered at home a little bit more to me,
of like, Okay, that makes more sense than a day
to day with your friends. Of like you, we want
(12:13):
to help each other be the best ladies that we
can be through our friendship. I get that. But yeah,
there's also the factor to where, especially if you're a
career oriented woman who spends a lot of time and
invest a lot of mental and emotional energy into her job,
I should just make this first person because I'm talking
(12:34):
about myself. I've found that that it's really important for
me to have friends where career is not a topic
that we even really go to, you know, like I
feel like we need a break from it at some point.
It is nice to talk to people with other passions
and with their energy being directed in different areas instead
(12:56):
of just you know, people exactly like yourself all the time. Yeah,
and I think you have to it goes both ways
to like to the point of what Hanna Rosen was
saying about, well, what if you have a friend who
lost a job. What if you have a friend who's
not so successful. Do you kick her out of the club? No?
And I think that it's you have to keep that
in mind too, when if you are the more successful friend,
how you treat and talk to your friends who are
(13:18):
maybe taking different paths than you are, and accepting that
as well. So it's a I mean, I like the
shine theory. I like the concept of the shine theory,
but as always, there's clearly more nuanced to it than
just make friends with powerful women, right exactly. Um, And
of course if you are the more successful woman, then
(13:39):
chances are some people in your social group might be
envious of the things that you've accomplished. Yeah, And there
has been a lot of research on jealousy and envy
in general. So first we want to share a few
facts about the purpose of jealousy why it exists, because
it seems like this, well, it is a negative emotion,
(14:02):
but it does have a purpose in the natural world.
And we're citing a paper by Sarah E. Hill and
David M. Bus called the Evolutionary Psychology of Envy. Right,
super interesting stuff that if you read it, and I
encourage you to do so, it makes you feel like
way less of a crazy person. Oh yeah, envy is
(14:25):
Envy is supernatural. It is I mean super natural to words,
not supernatural as in a deity. Um right, It is
innate and it likely played a role in like I
talked about earlier, getting the better spear, resource acquisition, and
human survival because it motivates certain things like submission, ambition,
(14:46):
or destruction. Basically, you choose between like I'm super envious.
That means I'm getting ambition, I might acquire something better
or find a way to do it myself, or you
know something terrible, like ah, you've got the better spear,
so I'll destroy yours that I feel better about myself.
But let's move away from spears and actually talk about
social groups, which is what we're here to actually talk about.
(15:08):
And envy has really been shown to lead to basically
talking smack about a person to your peer group because
that helps lower or it can help lower an opinion
of someone. So that's that's another like peer group focused
way of using envy as a destruction tool. But it's
(15:31):
a secretive emotion because we know it's negative and we
don't want to admit that we're being outperformed because what
does that mean? Envy is like Okay, you have something
that I really want, so I'm feeling envious of you,
and that might spark a whole slough of negative emotions
like hostility and insecurity and all this stuff. But I
don't want to tell this other person over here Kristen
(15:52):
had something that I want, because that just makes me
seem like, oh, well, I don't have enough for I
don't have what I need or should have exactly, which
is where shine theory would come in to say, rather
than giving into your insecurity, take advantage of it, befriend
make a you know, build the bridge between you and
that thing that you want. And shine theory jumped out
(16:16):
in this paper when they noted that quote. Researchers have
long noted that people reserve their feelings of enviousness for
those who are similar to themselves and for advantages that
are in self relevant domains. In other words, it's understandable
that we might have feelings of envy for the women
who are surrounding us, especially if they're in similar kinds
(16:39):
of careers or industries, because it tends to crop up
the most around the people who are the most like us.
Because that would lead us to think, well, you have
everything that I have. But except for that one thing,
why does your hair look amazing every single day? That's right, Chris,
I'm not talking about me. Yeah, and that hair thing
is not just a joke, I mean plays into an
(17:01):
evolutionary psychology theory on women's envy. In particular, we tend
to have greater envy and response to our same sex
peers being more attractive, whereas guys are more envious of
richer or guys with better resources. And that you know,
goes back to Okay, well what do men and women want? Traditionally,
(17:26):
and women are seeking to be provided for and men
are seeking a hot, fertile, young mate basically, I know. Yeah,
there's always there's always that factory and evolutionary psychology, it
seems like. But I did find it interesting that the
researchers mentioned that envy should peak during our peak reproductive years. Yeah, so,
(17:50):
because it's all about ultimately, according to evolutionary psychology, it
ultimately as is everything about babies. Yeah, fighting for resources
and those resources are firm, Yes, but there's there's also
been a lot of non evolutionary psychology research conducted on
jealousy and competition within female friendships, and it starts long
(18:15):
before our careers get off the ground. And one of
the most fascinating things to me about gender differences in
friendships that you see come up a lot in studies
is that girls tend to hold their girl friends and
I mean girl like young girls tend to hold their
girlfriends to hire standards, we think about friendships more often.
(18:38):
We expect more things like kindness, loyalty, and commitment from
our friends. We self disclose more to our girlfriends. I
mean think about I mean just the excitement of telling
or hearing a secret from a friend when you were
a girl. I mean, that was that was so much
of what it was. And while that establishes the foundation
(19:00):
for girl friendships being so incredible, it also sets us
up though, for chealousea and disappointment and competition too, because
we're so invested, right, And then that leads us to
what this study, which is in the journal Developmental Psychology
in two thousand five, was saying about how you know
girls are there's so much more of an intimacy level
(19:22):
and female friendship than in the friendships of young boys,
to the point where the interference of a third party
tends to be a significant source of tension between friends
and the primary basis for the breakup of friendships. Yeah,
and researchers usually anticipate jealousy interfering in girl friendships just
(19:43):
because we have quote deeper, more intimate friendships. And they
also went on to say, in this study, quote girls
in general reported higher levels of jealousy surrounding friends. So
this is something that we're dealing with in our formative years. Um.
But interesting to that gender difference might also be due
to a gendered stigma of jealousy being thought of as
(20:08):
more of a feminine emotion, probably because, like we were
talking about with the evolutionary psychology of envy, if you
express envy or jealousy, you're sort of tipping your hand
a little bit right, signaling weakness. So, for instance, if
boys are feeling jealous within the confines of these friendships,
they have a tendency to just say that they're upset
versus they're jealous of something. But Caroline, this is dealing
(20:31):
with younger girls. What then happens when puberty hits and
sexiness walks in the room. Oh my god, I feel
like everybody could probably guess the answer to this. Uh,
nothing good, nothing good, nothing good happens. Um. I mean,
it's so interesting. The studies that we read that basically
threw a sexy lady into the mix of two female
(20:55):
friends showed over and over again that if a sexy
lady walks in the room and encounters two female friends,
the minute she walks back out, the two female friends
are going to be like, am I God, did you
see her? I bet she's just here to bang the professor.
Whereas if a woman with like her hair and a
nod on the top of her head, wearing a T
shirt and pants, you know, if I walk into the room,
(21:17):
if I walk into the room, they don't think anything
of it at all. Yeah, yeah, there's no, we're not
We're not bringing sexy back. But this the fascinating thing, though, too,
was that only until recently, relatively recently, scientists didn't even
really understand the entire concept of female competition. It was
(21:39):
assumed to be more of a male thing, obviously relating
to gendered patterns of aggression and violence and adding a
little more complexity to this as well. Uh. The New
York Times was reporting on how female competition used to
be sort of a giant question mark because past evolutionary
analysis thought that our ancient poligonus societies just eliminated any
(22:05):
compulsion for female mate competition because hey, the hottest dudes
just have multiple lives, no big deal. But more recent
analysis has opened up that scenario a little bit for
female competition because they now think, well, women probably would
have still competed for the best resourced sperm contributor. So
(22:26):
it's it's all very romantic, it's very egalitarian, it's very progressive. Um,
but not joking. Female competition has only recently been studied,
and it is once you throw that sexiness into the
equation that it does come out, unfortunately, at least according
to the limited researches out there in the form of
(22:46):
female to female solt shaming. Yeah, so, researcher Sarah B.
Hurdie has is researching female competition, and she points out
that it's only since the nineteen eighties, which is really
when more and more women started getting into stem fields
that people turn their attention to studying women's competition and
and uh, female on female competition and aggression. Um. Of course,
(23:09):
as we've talked about before, female on female aggression does
tend to be a little more passive aggressive, a little
less actually aggressive aggressive or especially physical. I mean we
have to protect our delicate selves, right, Yeah, we're less
likelier to to punch each other. Yeah, don't punch me
in the baby maker, because it's got to be making
all those babies, all that sperm I acquired with my
(23:30):
new spear, and not in the face, because how will
I find the best sperm contributor. Instead, I'm just gonna
say horrible things about you behind your back, right, because
that goes back to the whole envy discussion of talking
about someone behind her back to basically take her down
brick by brick, behind the scenes, instead of just doing
it to her face. Yeah, which is really no less damaging,
(23:52):
arguably even more damaging than punching someone in the you.
The you, and this is our a according to Dr Hurdie,
that women limit access by maintaining advantage in the negotiation
of the resource, the resource being our ability to find
(24:13):
a decent person to procreate with. Um. But moving on
from that. Joyce Benison at Emmanuel College has also studied
female jealousy and competition, and she identified to Psychology Today
three unique characteristics of jealousy and women. One veiled aggression
rather than physical confrontation. We've already covered that too. High
(24:36):
status women are less motivated to invest in other women,
and women who try to distinguish or promote themselves threaten
other women and will encounter hostility and enter shine theory
needing to come into play, and the three social exclusion
to protect against potential competitors. So I mean we we
(24:58):
played dirty, but I mean this this supposedly like natural
drive to be doing all of this definitely follows us
into our careers and jealousy reflecting gender dynamics in the
workplace because when you think about it, there are so
few women as CEOs in the boardroom, in high power positions.
(25:20):
So hopefully we're not fighting for sperm in the office,
but we're fighting for very limited positions of power, and
so that still will involve those more the more veiled aggression,
maybe the feelings of envy and trying to take someone
down behind the scenes so that you're still being perceived
(25:40):
as like, oh, I'm a team player at work. Yeah,
but I do think one of the most damaging ways
if you are a woman vying for that limited seat,
I mean stepping on the backs of other women in
order to get there is I mean, I guess if
you're out for yourself, okay, but you're not helping other
women in the process. And and the fact the matter
(26:02):
is there's some people for which they don't care, and
they don't care about that at all. Every woman on
a reality show. I love those montages on YouTube of
of women going I'm not here to make friends. Yeah,
because I mean there is I think still this assumption
that women are going to naturally be competitive with each
other and be jealous of each other, and shine theory
(26:22):
does tip it on its head a bit of saying, hey,
you know, we can be successful, we can also be friendly,
and we can also maybe buck these perceptions that women
in positions of leadership and power are aggressive and angry
and unfriendly. Yeah, because that doesn't help at all either now,
And neither does the loneliness that comes when you're looking
at social media for hours on end and some woman
(26:45):
on social media's posting pictures of her trip to Bali.
I'm not speaking from person or just some dinner parties
you weren't invited to, not speaking from personal experience out
of their caroline. Yeah, social media, I mean we're gonna
we're gonna mend and social media because women spend a
lot of time on social media and as probably every
(27:07):
every listener has seen a trend piece on this, there
have been so many studies now linking Facebook and Instagram
in particular to feelings of loneliness, lower self worth, and
jealousy because we're seeing we're seeing things that we don't have.
I mean, yes, these are images that are curated and
filtered and cleverly captioned we hope to, you know, make
(27:31):
your life look as great as possible. But still, but
it's weird. It's almost like it's almost like the way
that fake sugar like will never satisfy your brain because
your brain wants real sugar and so it keeps searching.
It's it's almost like you're you're in a fake competition
with other women on social media when you look at
their amazing pictures of their trip or their dinner or
their vacation or husband or whoever whatever. Because so envy
(27:55):
is supposed to spark ambition, right, you see something you
want and you're like, I've got to figure out a
way to get that for myself and do do well
for myself. But the image that people present of themselves
on social media, it's not anywhere close to being real. Yeah,
you might post pictures of an amazing trip you took,
but that doesn't cover up like maybe you had a
(28:16):
bad day, maybe you're not feeling good about yourself. Maybe
you yourself are insecure, and so it's almost like people
are envious of something that they don't fully grasp and
so that like breeds this whole feeling of insecurity and
instability and envy when really you should just be congratulating
on your your friend on a good trip and saying, hey,
how are you doing? Yeah? I mean And when it
comes to that realness factor on social media and are
(28:38):
curated images, I would like to highlight that my Twitter
avatar that is fake blood on my face, not real, ladies.
You don't need to be envious. Um. And also I
think that you just came up with something that we
should call the splendid theory. So yeah, hello, shine theory, meat,
(28:58):
splendid theory and together what would that make fools gold?
But before we close out this conversation, we did want
to take a look at television because we mentioned earlier
about how media representations of female friendships, particularly in movies
and television often, you know, follow the assumption that we
(29:22):
all secretly hate each other and they're all freenemies. And
there is still a lot of that on TV, just
look at the Real Housewives franchise and The Bachelor. But
I think in some ways it has gotten better. We
do have some examples of uh, female friendships on TV.
And I'm only focusing on TV just because there's not
(29:43):
even time to get into film, but there are examples
of friendships where shine theory is at work, not just
in a sense of a career, but supporting people through
life decisions too. And I think that that's something especially
for me as an adult woman with my friends who
have now had years and years and years too. It's
it's not just the career success that can stoke envy,
(30:06):
but it's also the life success. We're all starting to
hit the milestones you're starting to get, like engagements and
marriages and pregnancies and divorce and that, and that plays
a role in things as well. Yeah, it is refreshing
to see depictions of female friendship that seemed very genuine.
I mean, take a show like Girls which wait, don't
turn off the podcast. I know not everybody is a
(30:28):
fan but when you have a show like Girls, I
feel like that's still depicting genuine female friendships and all
of the messiness that can come along with it. These
women are being pitted against each other. There's not cattiness
per se, but there's genuine love and support, just on
the same token as there is insecurity and sort of
measuring up against one another. Yeah, and Broad City. Hello,
(30:52):
Is there a more dedicated duo of female friends on
prime time? I don't think so, because I think that
Alanna would would murder for Abby, and she would also
marry her if she could, if Abbie would have her
um and then even to a Sex in the City.
You know, those friendships showed time and again lots of
(31:14):
support through milestones and successes and even through failures too,
And I feel like in that way, Sex in the
City was a healthy model Parks and recreation. Lesley notes
undying love of Anne right, And I think one of
my favorites, even though I hate this show now, is
Grey's Anatomy the friendship between Meredith and Christina, because I
(31:36):
remember so clearly the episode where Christina said that Meredith
was her person, because I was like, ah, there it is.
That's my friendship reflected in these two fictional characters, because
I feel that way about a couple of ladies too,
and it's like they're they're my my people, my tribe,
my my people, who will tell me when I'm full
(31:57):
of crap, but who will also support me unconditioned only.
And an older sitcom as well that depicts strong female
friendships through life events is Girl Friends. As well as
Awkward Black Girl. You have the Gilmore Girls, arguably, which
I feel like that's a little bit of a stretch,
and also Buffy the Vampire Slayer. We've got some strong
female friendships in there as well, so there's some good
(32:19):
modeling going on. And I do think that that for
the TV shows we just mentioned that are on the
air right now, it's interesting that most of them are
created by women. Yeah. I mean that's the importance of representation.
When people talk about why is it important to get
women in X Y Z field, this is a great example.
(32:43):
You get more women's perspectives in the TV writer's room,
and then you get more realistic depictions of actual women. Yeah,
and I think that those depictions are important. I think
it is important, especially for girls to see I mean
not that girls are sitting down and watching Gray's Anatomy.
Do girls watch Gray's Anatomy? I don't know. I don't know,
(33:06):
but I think just generally, it's so important for younger
girls to see healthy models of female friendship because from
the get go, leased according to studies and according to
my experience when I was a girl, we invest so
much in our friends, and our friends means so much
to us, and when they break our hearts, it's like
no other heartbreak. And I feel like this follows us
(33:30):
in Morrison evolves as we get older, and I really
love most of all Amy Poehler's advice of just don't
root for other people's failure. You know something's not for you,
that's fine, good for her, not for me exactly. So
let's hear from some listeners. When do you think about
the shine theory? How how has success and competition influenced
(33:55):
your closer friendships? And do you think that you should
make with powerful people or is that just kind of networking?
And guys, we want to hear from you two. I
know this was lady focused conversation, but we always want
to hear your thoughts as well. Mom Stuff at how
stuffwork dot com is our email address. You can also
tweet us and mom Stuff podcast and messages on Facebook,
(34:17):
and we've got a couple of messages this year with
you all right now, Well, I have a letter here
from Samantha about our Underpens episode. She says, I'm a
costume designer out in Seattle, and when it comes to
historical plays, the right undergarments are essential. While I was
(34:38):
interesting to hear about the political and social feelings on underwear,
I was saddened that you barely touched on the function
of these garments. If it weren't for courses, many Victorian
and Edwardian dresses would look awful since the dresses themselves
were never made a fabric that could hold structure or form.
You mentioned that once World War Two was over, we
go back to constraining undergarments like bullet FROs, hurdles, and petticoats,
(35:02):
but the shape and design of those dresses wouldn't be
fully realized because without those bases it would look like
a totally different dress. Even now, we used banks to
get the garments we wear to look like they are
intended to look. I love the podcast and thanks for
helping me become a better informed feminist keep up the
good work. Well, thank you, Samantha. Thank you for filling
(35:23):
us in on some historical details. And Samantha and some
other listeners have also filled us in on mispronunciation of
the word chemise, which I woefully misled Caroline into thinking
it was pronounced camise. So my since serrious apologies. I
don't know what I thought was. The thought was camis
(35:45):
always started that way in my head. It was just
like that Sarah c Anderson comic. Yeah. Well, I know
have a letter from Sarah about our literacy podcast and
Colombo and it made me laugh. So here it is.
She said, love your podcast. I listened to it all
the time at work. Thank you for all your hard work.
I was just listening to the Clittereste podcast. And I
know you were thinking that Columbo discovering the clitterest reminded
(36:09):
you of Columbus, but I humorously started thinking of Detective
Columbo played by Peter Falk in the nineteen six eight
TV show Columbo, which side note I totally watched all
the time with my parents. I kept inwardly laughing every
time I thought of his catchphrase just one thing I
don't understand and applying it to the clitterest. Nothing usually
(36:32):
groundbreaking to actually tell you about the episode other than
that I enjoyed it and the thought of Columbo the
Detective was super funny to me. I hope it made
you laugh too, and it did, Sarah, So thank you
and thanks everybody else who's written into us. Mom Stuff
at hou sufforks dot com is our email address and
for links to all of our social media as well
as all of our blogs, videos, and podcasts, including this
(36:54):
one with links to and Friedman's Peace about Shine theory
so you can read along. Head on over to stuff
mo I've Never Told You dot com for more on
this and thousands of other topics. Is it how Stuff
Works dot com
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