"Tripping the Prom Queen: The Truth About Women and Rivalry"

"Tripping the Prom Queen: The Truth About Women and Rivalry"
Susan Shapiro Barash
St. Martin's Press, $22.95





"Mean Girls" is one of my favorite movies. I don't remember having "Mean Girls" in my high school, but I'm sure they exist everywhere. They are the girls who have to better than you at everything, and they will remind you that they are. They will be your friends until it is no longer convenient for them or until you beat them at something. Then they will drop you and find something else where they will be more successful to show you up. Their mission in life is to be better than you. And they will be. And they will let you know.

Susan Shapiro Barash tells us it's not just high school girls. And it's not just enemies. It's friends, best friends, sisters, mothers, daughters, cousins and co-workers. And it happens when they are school girls, collegiates and adults; single, married and divorced; parents and childless; promoted, passed over and fired. Women and rivalry happens all the time.

Barash uses hundreds of interviews with a variety of women as the basis for "Tripping the Prom Queen: The Truth About Women and Rivalry." The unfortunate yet undeniable fact drawn from the interviews and her book is that all types of women of all ages are constantly in competition with each other unless they are able to realize it and make an effort to stop.

I picked up this book thinking I didn't have much rivalry with other women, wondering what this could be about. The more I read about the experiences other women have had, the more I thought about my own experiences in life that were competition and rivalry that came out of envy and jealousy that didn't end until I was convinced I was the better of the two of us in at least one way.

Envy and jealousy provide the basis for most of the competition and rivalry between women. This is clear through Barash's examples of women's friendships ending when one is getting married and the other is perpetually single, or one gets pregnant when another has been tirelessly trying to have children sans success, or one is promoted to a position another has had her eye on for longer. When someone gets something you want, it's natural to feel jealous because you have lost this supposed competition between the two of you.

The big question is why this is so prevelant in relationships among women and not with men. Unfortunately, Barash's book doesn't give us much of the why. She instead tells us the rivalry is inevitable, but there are ways to downplay it so relationships will not be destroyed when a woman meets success and her friend cannot.

So without much of a cause or a permanent solution, Barash just shows that rivalry among women exists. We all like to see the Prom Queen trip, even if she is our best friend. It's something we like to see because it assures us that we, the losers in the popularity contest, are still better than her at something, even if it's as simple as balance or poise.

"Tripping" doesn't provide much insight as to why the phenomenon of women's rivalry occurs, but it will give women readers insight as to why their relationships with other women have broken down, why envy over a minute detail could be the eventual downfall of a seemingly flawless friendship. And Barash's advice at the end of the book may just be the key to saving those that are worth it.