Other Women
by MARJORIE RIDDELL
MARJORIE RIDDELL is the atrthor many light articles. She recently gave up her work in an advertising agency in order to devote full time to her writing.
MEN who don’t understand women don’t always get along very well with men who say they do, but both parties are agreed that women do understand women and can’t get along with each other. Women, they say, have no conception of the true meaning of friendship and are incapable of making genuine friends of other women.
In fact, of course, we women are continually forming genuine friendships with other women, and this, considering other women, is firm evidence that we comprehend the meaning of friendship actually more clearly than do men. The basis of true friendship is tolerance.
Men’s friendships would be far from enduring if they were governed by the same circumstances as are those of women. The whole situation is quite different. Other women are, for one thing, usually more easily understood than dealt with, and thus our friendships with them have to embody faith and optimism to a degree quite unattainable by men.
Other women are often not even easy to like. They tend, on the whole, to be either much more attractive than we are, or — a smaller group — less attractive than we but brainier. Neither of these qualities is fundamentally lovable. When other women are less attractive than we are they don’t know it, or won’t admit it, and behave as though they are not, and get away with if.
Other women who are more attractive than we are wear either less make-up or more make-up than we do. Those who wear more make-up do it better and less obviously and everyone believes them, while those who wear less make-up stand around saying what is that we are putting on our eyes and how glad they are they don’t, have to do it. This isn’t lovable either. Other women who are less attractive than we are but wear more make-up often turn out to be more attractive than we are, while those who are less attractive and wear less make-up and stand around saying why are we doing that to our eyes and how glad they are they don’t have to are just plain hated.
Yet they are our friends. Those who are not our friends are those who tell men that they are not as attractive as we are and get it denied.
Other women who are brainier than we are make friends among themselves.
But whether we like or dislike, we rise above it; indeed, so pale in significance is all this, and so petty, that we can dislike our best friend and be rather fond of a woman we’ve always loathed and make all sorts of new friends who don’t like us at all. Sometimes we are not even on speaking terms with our best friend but it doesn’t affect our friendship.
Men say we never like other women who are more attractive than we are, but this is highly debatable. After all, this type of other woman sometimes has less success with men, which is gratifying, if infrequent, and causes amiability all round. Unless, of course, it turns out to be mere cunning.
Very attractive other women sometimes get written about anonymously to newspapers by men who say they are afraid of them, but most of us discount this as a form of inverted conceit. It would be nice, though.
Conversely, of course, men also say we only like women who are less attractive than we are, and this is nonsense. Everybody knows that it’s the least attractive woman who acts like a magnet to the most attractive men. Sometimes she does it without actually doing anything — and this, particularly, is almost unforgivable.
But for real cunning you’ve got to hand it to brainy women. For years they’ve managed to get themselves more or less overlooked by putting it about that men don’t like them. This deserves to be regarded with deep suspicion. Too often, after finding ourselves on a party when the other woman turns out to be a somethingologist, has our optimism been rudely jarred when it suddenly develops that we are talking about Einstein. This is very demoralizing, and compensated only by the fact that brainy women stand a good chance of mothering brainy children.
The basic cause of confusion in the ideas men cherish regarding our liking attractive or unattractive women lies, of course, in their strangely distorted conception of what constitutes attractiveness. This has the darndest results.
With all this at least, in maintaining our friendships, do we have to contend. Would men be able to form a true friendship under any of these circumstances? Never. Indeed, if men had to face half as many difficulties they would all be hermits. Even as things are one hears of more men hermits than women hermits.
