I can appreciate that this post has tapped into something for a lot of people: being criticized instead of being celebrated, interpersonal violence among friends, feeling alienated as a result of success, the fear of being mocked for wanting things loudly, boldly, being criticized when you do. I can understand the desire to discard shame and fear and bend the world to your will in the hopes that you can finally bask in your deserved glory with zero questions about whether you deserve to be there. But this essay isn't just saying that and should not be consumed uncritically. There are three things you tap into that are true, Ali. That you can go for what you want and lose it all in the blink of an eye regardless of fault. We’ve seen that unfold over the past week with the fires devastating Southern California. Also that the blanket of success is not safety. At least not socially. Doing better than everyone else will not make them like you. It could potentially be the opposite. Lastly, that preying on another person’s demise will not change your fate. But these truths are not an excuse to veer hard into a zero-accountability mindset where everything you want is acceptable and everyone who criticizes that is jealous and out to cut you down. There’s another truth that you’re arguing for—albeit more subtly—that aspiring to white masculinity as you see it: winner-takes-all, shameless, an absence of accountability, is a noble, righteous thing to do.
To contend specifically with your point around the Wing and the idea that white female founders were being hunted down and canceled en masse, the logic here is confusing. Part of the reason The Wing was successful was because it was a feminist utopia. That wasn't true. Should that not be addressed? The Wing purported to be a feminist safe haven, should that experience only extend to the women paying to be there? Did the employees, most of whom were Black and Brown and working class, deserve what they experienced? If so then feminism is a commodity, and identity is something to be traded, parceled out to the beautiful ones, the white ones, the ones who can pay. Your point that Audrey’s look and wealth got her so much press is true. No one would’ve cared if she wasn’t a beautiful white woman. By your admission, you wouldn’t have either. The story surrounding its demise was not focused on the people who were mistreated but the woman who would have to build something new. As you stated, you don’t care about who she harmed because that’s par for the course. The cost of doing business. But why? It’s telling that after witnessing that entire fiasco, the takeaway was that they were mean to the founder and you linked that to your personal experiences.
There’s also a fundamental misunderstanding of the power structure here, regardless of gender. The employees are by nature subordinates, and don't hold the same role as journalists, whose jobs are to report on the people in power, or the general public. Everyone has their role. Everyone is not a “jealous girl out to get the beautiful white woman just trying to make a way.” Living under late stage capitalism and asking to keep a job when the job market is hard isn’t some kind of paradox, it’s survival. There are very clear differences between social shunning for attaining success and criticism incurred for bad business practices, we cannot conflate the two.
That there is a double standard is true. But that is not imposed by women but by a society with patriarchy at its core. I'm curious as to why there isn't a call here to dismantle that system rather than asking everyone to be quiet or cheer for the women attempt to navigate it.
But to follow your logic to its endpoint—white women should be held to the same standard as white men, and celebrated for when they dominate and conquer, regardless of who is harmed in the process. They should be given the same level of forgiveness and given more money when they mess up. Not only is this unsustainable, it’s harmful and regressive. As you said, without the supposed guardrails of womanhood and fear of criticism, you noticed that male founders were more narcissistic, and more racist—and these are qualities to aspire to? You seem to be calling for more individualism at a time when we need to be leaning into the collective and pooling our resources to create a world our children will be able to witness, not utilizing our childhood experiences as fuel to create businesses and products that prioritize high growth and personal brand-building at any cost.
That little girls are socialized to be more egalitarian is good. Everybody should eat. It’s the only way we survive. To celebrate a value system where winner-takes-all and the strongman wins the day is to worship at the feet of the system we already have. And that’s fine if you continue to, but it’s not at all revelatory or different. It’s the status quo.
And last thing, because I know this has gone long. Boys gossip about other boys over mediocre martinis too. They just don’t do it where you can see it.
Thank you so much for the thoughtful reply and critique. I am all for readers contending with my work and my line of thinking, and appreciate you taking the time to unpack my writing around The Wing.
If you've read between the lines here that I’m promoting a “winner-takes-all, shameless” and accountability-free approach to self actualization or achieving success, that is what it is. I can’t contend with your interpretation, but that’s not what I intended to say with this piece. I do not believe that success at all costs - including costs to people, personnel, people in your care - is a right or noble thing to do. As someone who started and sold my own company and managed dozens of people through various pivots and tons of change, I had many real-life opportunities to confront and create my own priorities and at no point in my journey did I live by that mentality.
That said, I did understand first-hand the nuances of running a growing business from the inside, and that when things do go wrong, it’s not necessarily because a single person, or woman, is deliberately trying to inflict harm. In many cases, investors own more of the company than the actual founders and are applying pressure we the public, employees, or journalists can’t see. Or the company is trying to put out a massive fire that will, if resolved, keep everyone employed, so other very real issues get deprioritized in the meantime so everyone can keep a paycheck and put food on the table. My main point about The Wing - at least as I tried to make it - was that the coverage of the company’s downfall, mostly written by women journalists (which I believe leads to some inherent bias given the study I shared), was very targeted toward the founder, rather than the larger mechanics of the business and compounding factors and other players that led the company to its ultimate end. I think *that’s* a journalist’s job, not just to report on the people in power. And to clarify - NO - the Black and Brown and working class employees of The Wing did not deserve poor treatment there, which I mention in the piece. As someone who worked in the service industry for many years, I think it is and has been broken for a long time. The Wing putting a feminist utopian stamp atop a cafe and coworking environment with these tiered levels of employment, and this exclusive clubhouse vibe, was a recipe for disaster. I cannot imagine what their experience was like, and I would never dare defend it. I simply feel that instead of looking at, interrogating and blaming the larger system The Wing was in - the patriarchal system you mention, defined by moving fast and breaking things, scaling at all costs for your VCs, using short term infusions of money to solve longer term cultural issues, etc - journalists, employees and the public went after a single individual who represented female ambition, achievement and then failure, over a system that has ruled and harmed people for so long.
You have given me something really important to think about and have 100% shifted my perspective in a few areas. You are completely correct that the tone of the piece, and my overarching message, is super individualistic and frames egalitarianism as a bad or dangerous thing. I didn’t notice this until you called it out, and I appreciate it. I think given my personal experience within the system and the ways it has absolutely broken me - the VC world specifically - I have lost my own hope in trying to change it. I do not aspire to be racist, narcissistic or winner-takes-all. Those are not and have never been my values and I’d never want to explicitly or inadvertently promote them. But I do think along the way - and I mention this at the top of the piece - I started to covet people and women with that strongman mentality. There was not a call to dismantle the system in my piece because, to be totally candid, I am at a crossroads with how to cultivate the characteristics the system “values” with maintaining characteristics I’m personally proud of. You are right that we need to be leaning into the collective, and I appreciate you confronting me about traits I may have been putting on a pedestal that I couldn’t even see myself. So thank you.
Two last things. 1) “There are very clear differences between social shunning for attaining success and criticism incurred for bad business practices, we cannot conflate the two.” - you are 100% right and I agree the structure and framing of the piece could have done a better job of not doing this.
2) Yes, I know boys gossip. And I know their sessions are far less entertaining than ours.
Thanks for responding and sharing addtl. context around your thinking. Re: the wing, the founder has always been very front-of-center in the imagination of the ideal wing customer, so it's not surprising to me that people viewed the space as an extension of her ideologies and values and fled when she didn't live up to that promise. Furthermore, she has been able to leverage that into another successful business, and the same outlets that reported on her demise rushed to cover the opening of her store and subsequently her hotel. It's also important to note that part of the reason we're seeing the level of criticism, particularly from other women, beyond jealousy, is a shared value system. The Wing wanted to be inclusive, LGBTQIA+ friendly, anti-racist, etc. and attracted people and media who purport to share those values as well. That is not an expectation for the business sector or a cultural norm and so the metrics for success are less identity based, rooted in data points and profitability. They just don't care and they don't have to. The Wing claimed to be different, the founder claimed to be different, though many of us from the outside could have predicted that many of the deeply entrenched systemic issues would make their way in—rainbow books and curvy couches notwithstanding. Inclusivity and equity are not designed to be profitable, these are values predicated on fairness, born perhaps of those childhood games and socialization strategies. That Audrey represented female ambition says more, I think, about who society make heroes of and how closely we hold onto the fantasy of having it all: being moral and rich, wealthy and well-liked, powerful and empathetic, beautiful and the most-liked girl in the room. These things don't have to be diametrically opposed but are rarely compatible, evidenced by the many founders who set out to do good and end up choosing profit over people because that's what the system demands. It isn't fair and women have it harder, absolutely. This system is predicated on exclusivity and keeping the best perks and the biggest loopholes for the people who have the right look. That will never be women, let alone women who are non-white.
What to do with your personal value system surrounding this reality is up to you but I'd say that seeking success and validation in an environment that conditionally and often reluctantly embraces non-white people and women has a negative impact on empathy for the people that the system crushes underfoot. I'm not saying that there's no room for discussion around interpersonal dynamics or individual ways of existing alongside one another, just that it can't be simplified to girls are catty so ignore them and by following a man's blueprint you'll feel no shame. That isn't to say one shouldn't try to succeed or cease having ambition, but there will always be people who are jealous or resistant to someone else's personal progress—even Jesus had haters. While young girls may be socialized to be particularly attuned to this kind of noise and hold likability in high regard, I don't think the solution is to teach young girls or women or whoever to view all of that criticism as oppositional, but to cultivate the discernment to delineate between mean-spirited comments that hurt feelings to attempts to hold folks accountable for their complicity in fortifying a messed up system by trying to grab a piece of it.
I enjoyed reading this. This also explains why online-style social justice movements are so popular among women. Such movements let women openly aspire for power, attention, and money while also having a natural shield against the usual attacks you speak of in your piece. By claiming some personal or group victim status, the would-be-loathed girlboss is no longer a girlboss to be cut down, but a saintly heroine who cannot be criticized. Of course, that only compels critics to go on some supposedly morality-based cancel inquiry anyway.
wow this is such a wild but accurate read into why and how women might weaponize social justice for the “wrong” reasons. it reminds me of literally every character in the docuseries Savior Complex on HBO - if you haven’t seen it, it’s insane.
Ali, this essay nails it. Women going for the lives they want shouldn’t be threatening, but oh, the daggers fly—and when you add motherhood into the mix? It’s like ambition turns into a personal offense. As a mother of ten consulting in boardrooms, I live it: the double takes, the side-eyes, and the "who does she think she is?"
What I love most is your realization that owning our agency is the only way forward, no matter what. And honestly? “Names followed by c**t” had me howling. Thank you for keeping it raw, real, and exactly what so many of us need to hear.
oh gosh i can’t even imagine the intensity once motherhood is lobbed in there. props to you for owning who you are and putting up with all the judgment, but i’m sorry you go through it. and thank you so much for reading 🖤 love making you think and laugh
This phenomenon is so awkward to talk about without sounding self aggrandizing. Thank you for bringing it to light in an evidence-based way. I no longer feel crazy.
i totally hear you on the self aggrandizing part, but honestly, i don’t even think women need to have verifiable “wins” to feel this way. i think women experience
poppy trimming or cutting even if they’re TRYING to do more
or be more, is my point! you don’t need to be The Best or miss congeniality to experience this phenomenon of being “ put in your place” - i think often it happens as a way to prevent you from even getting there
I love this so much and this is so real. I wrote something that scratched this a little bit on my page titled: “The greatest sin of womanhood is to want”. Your attention to detail in this essay is eating. I will revisit this from time to time!
definitely - when i’ve felt my most vile internally, it’s always because i’m not taking action toward what *i* actually want, which then makes me feel insecure, and then prone to be judgy toward others.
Thank you for putting all of this into words. I have always felt pressure to keep my achievements (personal, academic, professional) close to my chest lest I accidentally upset someone. The bitterness I have felt in the past from women who want what I have (all the while preaching girls supporting girls) is terrifying.
So eye-opening. I've seen that sub before and I pray that it's all teenage girls and not 30-something women (it's probably the latter). I wish I could've read this when I was 13 years old!
yes! i feel like so often i am writing for my 13 year old self 🫡🫶 i too pray the sub is made up of young gals who we can say.. maybe they don’t know better? but so sadly i think it’s not the case. thank you so much for reading!
i love this take. i think it gets much easier over time to have that discernment, at least that’s been the case for me. so glad you shared and tysm for reading!
thank you Mira! yeah that research left me speechless. it really gave context for so much of what women experience in their teen, young adult and adult years - crazy to think it all that competition starts brewing and solidifying when we’re as young as 3!!!!!
You really thought you did something with this weaksauce clapback! Adorable. Please read what you wrote in your post. You carry on as if snark is some new phenomenon invented on Reddit and centering on one specific sub. It has been around for decades on dozens of platforms and you should all have accepted it by now and moved on. Writing articles about it does nothing but send more people over to join in...*dear*. But ok.
Wow. I’ve luckily not suffered this, not from my close friends anyway (lucky me❤️), but I just had to say I instantly subscribed because you are a GREAT writer and I love love love to come across anyone who writes the way I imagine they would talk! Excited for more of you in the future❤️ don’t let these jealous hoes get you down! (doesn’t seem like they are, just saying haha)
Thank you Danielle! you're a lucky gal indeed and tysm for the kind words about my writing. and I definitely write how I talk 😂 - you're very intuitive. I have been quiet on here for a few weeks as I've been moving apartments and casting for the trailer to market my fiction thriller (coming this September!!!) but I'm so glad you're here and I promise I'll have more for you SOON!!!
I can appreciate that this post has tapped into something for a lot of people: being criticized instead of being celebrated, interpersonal violence among friends, feeling alienated as a result of success, the fear of being mocked for wanting things loudly, boldly, being criticized when you do. I can understand the desire to discard shame and fear and bend the world to your will in the hopes that you can finally bask in your deserved glory with zero questions about whether you deserve to be there. But this essay isn't just saying that and should not be consumed uncritically. There are three things you tap into that are true, Ali. That you can go for what you want and lose it all in the blink of an eye regardless of fault. We’ve seen that unfold over the past week with the fires devastating Southern California. Also that the blanket of success is not safety. At least not socially. Doing better than everyone else will not make them like you. It could potentially be the opposite. Lastly, that preying on another person’s demise will not change your fate. But these truths are not an excuse to veer hard into a zero-accountability mindset where everything you want is acceptable and everyone who criticizes that is jealous and out to cut you down. There’s another truth that you’re arguing for—albeit more subtly—that aspiring to white masculinity as you see it: winner-takes-all, shameless, an absence of accountability, is a noble, righteous thing to do.
To contend specifically with your point around the Wing and the idea that white female founders were being hunted down and canceled en masse, the logic here is confusing. Part of the reason The Wing was successful was because it was a feminist utopia. That wasn't true. Should that not be addressed? The Wing purported to be a feminist safe haven, should that experience only extend to the women paying to be there? Did the employees, most of whom were Black and Brown and working class, deserve what they experienced? If so then feminism is a commodity, and identity is something to be traded, parceled out to the beautiful ones, the white ones, the ones who can pay. Your point that Audrey’s look and wealth got her so much press is true. No one would’ve cared if she wasn’t a beautiful white woman. By your admission, you wouldn’t have either. The story surrounding its demise was not focused on the people who were mistreated but the woman who would have to build something new. As you stated, you don’t care about who she harmed because that’s par for the course. The cost of doing business. But why? It’s telling that after witnessing that entire fiasco, the takeaway was that they were mean to the founder and you linked that to your personal experiences.
There’s also a fundamental misunderstanding of the power structure here, regardless of gender. The employees are by nature subordinates, and don't hold the same role as journalists, whose jobs are to report on the people in power, or the general public. Everyone has their role. Everyone is not a “jealous girl out to get the beautiful white woman just trying to make a way.” Living under late stage capitalism and asking to keep a job when the job market is hard isn’t some kind of paradox, it’s survival. There are very clear differences between social shunning for attaining success and criticism incurred for bad business practices, we cannot conflate the two.
That there is a double standard is true. But that is not imposed by women but by a society with patriarchy at its core. I'm curious as to why there isn't a call here to dismantle that system rather than asking everyone to be quiet or cheer for the women attempt to navigate it.
But to follow your logic to its endpoint—white women should be held to the same standard as white men, and celebrated for when they dominate and conquer, regardless of who is harmed in the process. They should be given the same level of forgiveness and given more money when they mess up. Not only is this unsustainable, it’s harmful and regressive. As you said, without the supposed guardrails of womanhood and fear of criticism, you noticed that male founders were more narcissistic, and more racist—and these are qualities to aspire to? You seem to be calling for more individualism at a time when we need to be leaning into the collective and pooling our resources to create a world our children will be able to witness, not utilizing our childhood experiences as fuel to create businesses and products that prioritize high growth and personal brand-building at any cost.
That little girls are socialized to be more egalitarian is good. Everybody should eat. It’s the only way we survive. To celebrate a value system where winner-takes-all and the strongman wins the day is to worship at the feet of the system we already have. And that’s fine if you continue to, but it’s not at all revelatory or different. It’s the status quo.
And last thing, because I know this has gone long. Boys gossip about other boys over mediocre martinis too. They just don’t do it where you can see it.
Hi Tembe,
Thank you so much for the thoughtful reply and critique. I am all for readers contending with my work and my line of thinking, and appreciate you taking the time to unpack my writing around The Wing.
If you've read between the lines here that I’m promoting a “winner-takes-all, shameless” and accountability-free approach to self actualization or achieving success, that is what it is. I can’t contend with your interpretation, but that’s not what I intended to say with this piece. I do not believe that success at all costs - including costs to people, personnel, people in your care - is a right or noble thing to do. As someone who started and sold my own company and managed dozens of people through various pivots and tons of change, I had many real-life opportunities to confront and create my own priorities and at no point in my journey did I live by that mentality.
That said, I did understand first-hand the nuances of running a growing business from the inside, and that when things do go wrong, it’s not necessarily because a single person, or woman, is deliberately trying to inflict harm. In many cases, investors own more of the company than the actual founders and are applying pressure we the public, employees, or journalists can’t see. Or the company is trying to put out a massive fire that will, if resolved, keep everyone employed, so other very real issues get deprioritized in the meantime so everyone can keep a paycheck and put food on the table. My main point about The Wing - at least as I tried to make it - was that the coverage of the company’s downfall, mostly written by women journalists (which I believe leads to some inherent bias given the study I shared), was very targeted toward the founder, rather than the larger mechanics of the business and compounding factors and other players that led the company to its ultimate end. I think *that’s* a journalist’s job, not just to report on the people in power. And to clarify - NO - the Black and Brown and working class employees of The Wing did not deserve poor treatment there, which I mention in the piece. As someone who worked in the service industry for many years, I think it is and has been broken for a long time. The Wing putting a feminist utopian stamp atop a cafe and coworking environment with these tiered levels of employment, and this exclusive clubhouse vibe, was a recipe for disaster. I cannot imagine what their experience was like, and I would never dare defend it. I simply feel that instead of looking at, interrogating and blaming the larger system The Wing was in - the patriarchal system you mention, defined by moving fast and breaking things, scaling at all costs for your VCs, using short term infusions of money to solve longer term cultural issues, etc - journalists, employees and the public went after a single individual who represented female ambition, achievement and then failure, over a system that has ruled and harmed people for so long.
You have given me something really important to think about and have 100% shifted my perspective in a few areas. You are completely correct that the tone of the piece, and my overarching message, is super individualistic and frames egalitarianism as a bad or dangerous thing. I didn’t notice this until you called it out, and I appreciate it. I think given my personal experience within the system and the ways it has absolutely broken me - the VC world specifically - I have lost my own hope in trying to change it. I do not aspire to be racist, narcissistic or winner-takes-all. Those are not and have never been my values and I’d never want to explicitly or inadvertently promote them. But I do think along the way - and I mention this at the top of the piece - I started to covet people and women with that strongman mentality. There was not a call to dismantle the system in my piece because, to be totally candid, I am at a crossroads with how to cultivate the characteristics the system “values” with maintaining characteristics I’m personally proud of. You are right that we need to be leaning into the collective, and I appreciate you confronting me about traits I may have been putting on a pedestal that I couldn’t even see myself. So thank you.
Two last things. 1) “There are very clear differences between social shunning for attaining success and criticism incurred for bad business practices, we cannot conflate the two.” - you are 100% right and I agree the structure and framing of the piece could have done a better job of not doing this.
2) Yes, I know boys gossip. And I know their sessions are far less entertaining than ours.
Thanks for responding and sharing addtl. context around your thinking. Re: the wing, the founder has always been very front-of-center in the imagination of the ideal wing customer, so it's not surprising to me that people viewed the space as an extension of her ideologies and values and fled when she didn't live up to that promise. Furthermore, she has been able to leverage that into another successful business, and the same outlets that reported on her demise rushed to cover the opening of her store and subsequently her hotel. It's also important to note that part of the reason we're seeing the level of criticism, particularly from other women, beyond jealousy, is a shared value system. The Wing wanted to be inclusive, LGBTQIA+ friendly, anti-racist, etc. and attracted people and media who purport to share those values as well. That is not an expectation for the business sector or a cultural norm and so the metrics for success are less identity based, rooted in data points and profitability. They just don't care and they don't have to. The Wing claimed to be different, the founder claimed to be different, though many of us from the outside could have predicted that many of the deeply entrenched systemic issues would make their way in—rainbow books and curvy couches notwithstanding. Inclusivity and equity are not designed to be profitable, these are values predicated on fairness, born perhaps of those childhood games and socialization strategies. That Audrey represented female ambition says more, I think, about who society make heroes of and how closely we hold onto the fantasy of having it all: being moral and rich, wealthy and well-liked, powerful and empathetic, beautiful and the most-liked girl in the room. These things don't have to be diametrically opposed but are rarely compatible, evidenced by the many founders who set out to do good and end up choosing profit over people because that's what the system demands. It isn't fair and women have it harder, absolutely. This system is predicated on exclusivity and keeping the best perks and the biggest loopholes for the people who have the right look. That will never be women, let alone women who are non-white.
What to do with your personal value system surrounding this reality is up to you but I'd say that seeking success and validation in an environment that conditionally and often reluctantly embraces non-white people and women has a negative impact on empathy for the people that the system crushes underfoot. I'm not saying that there's no room for discussion around interpersonal dynamics or individual ways of existing alongside one another, just that it can't be simplified to girls are catty so ignore them and by following a man's blueprint you'll feel no shame. That isn't to say one shouldn't try to succeed or cease having ambition, but there will always be people who are jealous or resistant to someone else's personal progress—even Jesus had haters. While young girls may be socialized to be particularly attuned to this kind of noise and hold likability in high regard, I don't think the solution is to teach young girls or women or whoever to view all of that criticism as oppositional, but to cultivate the discernment to delineate between mean-spirited comments that hurt feelings to attempts to hold folks accountable for their complicity in fortifying a messed up system by trying to grab a piece of it.
I enjoyed reading this. This also explains why online-style social justice movements are so popular among women. Such movements let women openly aspire for power, attention, and money while also having a natural shield against the usual attacks you speak of in your piece. By claiming some personal or group victim status, the would-be-loathed girlboss is no longer a girlboss to be cut down, but a saintly heroine who cannot be criticized. Of course, that only compels critics to go on some supposedly morality-based cancel inquiry anyway.
wow this is such a wild but accurate read into why and how women might weaponize social justice for the “wrong” reasons. it reminds me of literally every character in the docuseries Savior Complex on HBO - if you haven’t seen it, it’s insane.
I'll take a watch!
Ali, this essay nails it. Women going for the lives they want shouldn’t be threatening, but oh, the daggers fly—and when you add motherhood into the mix? It’s like ambition turns into a personal offense. As a mother of ten consulting in boardrooms, I live it: the double takes, the side-eyes, and the "who does she think she is?"
What I love most is your realization that owning our agency is the only way forward, no matter what. And honestly? “Names followed by c**t” had me howling. Thank you for keeping it raw, real, and exactly what so many of us need to hear.
oh gosh i can’t even imagine the intensity once motherhood is lobbed in there. props to you for owning who you are and putting up with all the judgment, but i’m sorry you go through it. and thank you so much for reading 🖤 love making you think and laugh
I hope you become a poppy that thrives, growing stronger with every breeze so that even the sharpest scissors feel blunt to you. <3
Thank you for the thought provoking read and watering my soil!
thank you for reading 🫶
This phenomenon is so awkward to talk about without sounding self aggrandizing. Thank you for bringing it to light in an evidence-based way. I no longer feel crazy.
i totally hear you on the self aggrandizing part, but honestly, i don’t even think women need to have verifiable “wins” to feel this way. i think women experience
poppy trimming or cutting even if they’re TRYING to do more
or be more, is my point! you don’t need to be The Best or miss congeniality to experience this phenomenon of being “ put in your place” - i think often it happens as a way to prevent you from even getting there
I love this so much and this is so real. I wrote something that scratched this a little bit on my page titled: “The greatest sin of womanhood is to want”. Your attention to detail in this essay is eating. I will revisit this from time to time!
Thank you Stephanie! I really appreciate it and am grateful you're reading!
A lot of people hate people who go for what they want.
Ambition shines a light on their own insecurities.
definitely - when i’ve felt my most vile internally, it’s always because i’m not taking action toward what *i* actually want, which then makes me feel insecure, and then prone to be judgy toward others.
100 percent. When you're doing good you're much kinder towards others. Winning makes you want others to win too.
Thank you for putting all of this into words. I have always felt pressure to keep my achievements (personal, academic, professional) close to my chest lest I accidentally upset someone. The bitterness I have felt in the past from women who want what I have (all the while preaching girls supporting girls) is terrifying.
that’s very sad to hear! i
hope you find the right people who will cheer you on, lift you up and applaud your achievements. they exist!!!! 🖤
So eye-opening. I've seen that sub before and I pray that it's all teenage girls and not 30-something women (it's probably the latter). I wish I could've read this when I was 13 years old!
yes! i feel like so often i am writing for my 13 year old self 🫡🫶 i too pray the sub is made up of young gals who we can say.. maybe they don’t know better? but so sadly i think it’s not the case. thank you so much for reading!
As someone who has been mentoring women intimately full time for almost 7 years - YES.
I hope your work together helps them confront and manage these experiences. Thank you for reading Clara!
Sadly, I’ve experienced a LOT of this in my personal and professional life.
It hasn’t slowed me down, but it’s galvanized whose opinions I should care about and whose I should throw in the trash.
i love this take. i think it gets much easier over time to have that discernment, at least that’s been the case for me. so glad you shared and tysm for reading!
Definitely gets easier with time and experience. When I was younger, I just thought it was how I was supposed to be towards other women, too.
This is such a brilliant piece!!! The research in young girls/boys social behaviour blew my mind! You’re a brilliant writer and thinker 🤍
thank you Mira! yeah that research left me speechless. it really gave context for so much of what women experience in their teen, young adult and adult years - crazy to think it all that competition starts brewing and solidifying when we’re as young as 3!!!!!
Needed this.
thank you for reading, Jess. huge fan of the love list and hope you keep going for what you want 🖤🫡
shared it with a lot of friends! Back at you
The snark pages are pure evil. Very crazy , weird part of the internet for sure.
such a wild corner of the internet 🤯curse the day i found it
LOL it's not like Reddit subs invented this sort of thing on the internet, dear. But ok.
i never said they did, dear. but ok!
You really thought you did something with this weaksauce clapback! Adorable. Please read what you wrote in your post. You carry on as if snark is some new phenomenon invented on Reddit and centering on one specific sub. It has been around for decades on dozens of platforms and you should all have accepted it by now and moved on. Writing articles about it does nothing but send more people over to join in...*dear*. But ok.
Imagine using the term, "weaksauce" in 2025. lol.
Wow. I’ve luckily not suffered this, not from my close friends anyway (lucky me❤️), but I just had to say I instantly subscribed because you are a GREAT writer and I love love love to come across anyone who writes the way I imagine they would talk! Excited for more of you in the future❤️ don’t let these jealous hoes get you down! (doesn’t seem like they are, just saying haha)
Thank you Danielle! you're a lucky gal indeed and tysm for the kind words about my writing. and I definitely write how I talk 😂 - you're very intuitive. I have been quiet on here for a few weeks as I've been moving apartments and casting for the trailer to market my fiction thriller (coming this September!!!) but I'm so glad you're here and I promise I'll have more for you SOON!!!