Chicks Before Dicks, OR DO THEY?

A younger woman didn't like me and it hurt my feelings.

(Quick note: If you enjoy this post, please feel free to ♥️ it! Every ♥️ is like a microdose of friendship….)

This past season on The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, Dorit and Kyle were wrestling with a question as old as time and their original faces: are you a girl’s girl? It was hard to watch these two friends challenge each other’s fealty not just to their own bond, but to The Sisterhood itself. Their marriages were crumbling. They needed each other. So why were they fighting? Were they just bored? After all, the RH’s have unlimited time and money, and yet seem to have no actual interests besides shopping at boutiques and opening their own. Still, I don’t think the much-discussed girl’s girl purity test was about boredom. The women on RHOBH have been friends a long time. They’ve been friends since they were actually wives! Husbands have traded them in for newer models. Kids have moved out and landed their own Bravo spinoffs. But they endure. And the one constant in all of their lives has been each other. And the camera crew.

Kyle and Dorit, girl’s girls???

Months after the season wrapped, I’m still thinking about Dorit and Kyle’s girl’s girl storyline. At first I thought maybe female friendship was having a cultural moment. I watched Hacks. I read All Fours. I got an invitation to a girls’ trip for the first time since getting married. Then I realized, there’s a difference between what’s suddenly important to me, and what’s important to everyone. (My five-year-old wouldn’t say female friendship is having a moment, but he might argue that Pokemon, or sticking your finger in your butt then refusing to wash your hands, are.) Female friendship is suddenly at the forefront of my consciousness because, like all those Real Housewives, I’ve become a middle-aged woman, and now that I am, I realize there is nothing more life-sustaining than being surrounded by other women of a certain age. I spent most of my youth thinking I adequately valued the women in my life, as I bounced from one serious relationship with a man-child to another. Do I regret it? Well, as Whitney from Secret Lives of Mormon Wives would say, if I hadn’t made those mistakes, I wouldn’t be where I am today… But damn, I wasted a lot of time on annoying dudes. All the Darren Aronofsky films I watched. All the Norman Mailer books I read. All the YouTube videos I watched with a man hovering over my shoulder, interjecting just as one was about to end, “Wait! There’s one more I want to show you….” That’s time I can never get back. All I can do is live differently from this moment forward. Sadly, one bitch is standing in my way.

For the past few weeks, a friend has been trying to offload a very cute kitten she found in her backyard. As long time readers know, I’m a Cat Lady without her flock, because my cats are DEAD, okay? They were MURDERED by THE PASSAGE OF TIME, okay?! Anyhoo, despite pressure from me to adopt said kitten, my husband has been reluctant to assume responsibility for one more whiny, hungry mouth. But this week, my friend went out of town and asked if we could cat sit, and it seemed like the perfect sliver of an opportunity to make my husband fall in love with another woman. Because she’s a girl kitten. Another girl under my roof. After thirteen long years of male cats, seven long years of a male husband, and almost six long years mothering men and men alone, I would finally have some female companionship when I’m ready to appreciate it most.

But like so many younger women (my former self included), this little c*nt, this whore, this LOLITA, was not ready accept the rare and perfect gift of female friendship. This kitten was no a girl’s girl. Oh sure, I was the one who fed her, cleaned her little box, protected her from the Wreck-It-Ralph-barbarism of my three-year-old as my husband, without looking away from the TV, remarked “I actually think the kids are pretty good with her…” But was it my lap she wanted to curl up in? Was it against my chest that she wanted to sleep at night? Readers, it was not. Instead, she let my children carry her around like a pallet on a forklift. She let them chase her wildly through the hall, and when they stopped because I yelled at them to leave her alone, she’d come trotting back, shaking that tail, begging for more. Was she interested in being my shoulder to cry on? Did she want to ease the burden of my emotional load? She did not. And you can bet your sweet ass it hurt my feelings. I’ve long understood why daughters resent their mothers. Now it finally clicked why mothers resent them right back. So this morning at 4:00am, as I lay next to my three-year-old who couldn’t sleep, listening to the kitten meowing loudly on the other side of my sons’ door, I thought, no way that Jezebel is staying here. Send her to that special place in hell for women who don’t support other women.

Not MY lap.

In this modern world, I try not to subscribe too much to stereotypes about gender essentialism. And yet, here I am, writing a whole newsletter tinged with these fixed beliefs. I must sound like Gloria Steinem in 2016, accusing young women of supporting Bernie Sanders because his campaign was “where the boys are.” Maybe that’s the real sign of hitting middle age. You assume young people (and cats) are doing things for the same reasons you used to. And by projecting your former motivations onto the younger generation, you become your own cliche. Do I care? Not really. I think we need all of it; the energetic folly of youth, the reproachful wisdom that comes with age.