I’ve noticed an unfortunate trend in the last couple of years. A trend of judgment and I don’t just mean in the military world. The saddest thing is that when I think about it, this isn’t even a recent “trend” at all, but something that has been around my entire life. Have you noticed as women how quick we are to pronounce sentence on other women?
There are so many “wars” women are constantly at battle with other women over, flinging their judgments like bombs at another woman’s life. The mommy wars. The wife wars. The military spouse wars. The fitness and healthy eating wars. Essentially what we’re trying to say as women seems to be that “you are doing it wrong and I am doing it right.” And boy, oh boy, are we judging you all along the way.
This was around when I was younger too. In elementary school we judged the girl for being the teacher’s pet. In middle school we judged the girls who we felt didn’t have enough fashion sense, (ahem, me), or the girls who hadn’t lost the baby fat yet (also me.) In high school we judged the girls who weren’t popular, and then girls who weren’t popular judged the ones that were because after all, we “knew” why they were popular didn’t we?
And that right there is what it all comes down to, the assumptions we make every day about other women that leads us to judging their lifestyles, choices, or even just who they are as a person. We judge a woman every time she walks by; in a matter of second we’ve already assessed her hair, her clothes, and her entire persona and we’ve decided how we feel about her before we’ve even spoken to her. This is so incredibly prevalent in the military world too, there are so many snap judgments we make about other military spouses. “Gosh, I can’t believe Mary stays home even though she doesn’t have kids and doesn’t work or go to school. She’s just leeching off her poor husband.” Little do we know that maybe Mary is depressed about being out of work, is desperately trying to find a job in her field, and due to the poor economy hasn’t found one yet. The sadder thing is we’ll probably never know, because once that verdict has been made, it is permanent. We have no interest in getting to know Mary anymore either, because after all, at first glance we’ve already decided we already “know” everything there is to know about her anyway, haven’t we?
