Many of us are familiar with the moment after the end of the breakup or fall of a situationship. The moment when we see a new Instagram post or hear a rumor through friends. The true acknowledgment that what we once had with someone is over and someone else gets to be with them. The feeling of being replaced by the “new girl”.
Who is this “new girl”? It always has us wondering and comparing. The instant we learn that this “new girl” exists we begin to feel threatened. Plenty of times the language used against this “new girl” is negative. Phrases such as “you’re so much prettier than her” or “she’s ugly anyway” are repeated and said as a way to build the “old girl” up.
Why is it we feel the desire to attack the person our ex might be dating, especially after the relationship ended? The obvious answer is that we feel threatened and insecure. Our friends love us enough to tear down another girl to make us feel better. Is this really helping?
The response to the “new girl” situation being negative will always make us feel worse in the long run. Girls from a young age are told to compete with one another, specifically for male attention. Look at any 90s rom-com or Barbie movie, the antagonist is primarily a woman. This woman is always either competing with the protagonist for the male or fighting with the women for something else: status or power.
The feeling of competition between women comes from when we are firstborn. Women are born being told to fight for the same chances men have, while men are born into a world that tells them they don’t need to fight at all. Girls, when we are younger, don’t get to feel confident without feeling a sense of shame, when girls act out or are more aggressive they are scolded rather than emboldened. Boys get to be more rebellious because of the idea that that is how boys are.
This all leads to now. Where women don’t always feel confident in themselves after a relationship ends, and instead go into this mode of competition. The discussions that attack innocent girls who are just trying to explore a new relationship with a person we may have known in the past, will never help us grow. If anything it holds us back from moving on and seeing who we can be outside the other person.
In our society, social competition is already so intense, why make it worse for the “new girl”? For every instance where we feel like the “old girl”, we were once the “new girl” to someone else. Constantly speaking negatively about a person we don’t know will not make us feel better about ourselves, but only harm our own perceptions and confidence of ourselves.
Tag us @valleymag with your opinions on the “new girl”
