She ain't heavy...

The only way to create a sisterhood is by becoming a good sister to other women

It is tempting to dismiss that old adage about women being each other’s worst enemies as a cliché. It is easy to see it as the kind of sexist claptrap that gets tossed around to give feminism and feminists a bad name. But take a good look around you? Do you really see a supportive sisterhood at work? Or do you see snarkiness, bitchiness, rivalry, and plain old spite? If you are among the lucky ones, you will experience a mix of both. But speaking for myself, I must confess that I see much more of the latter. 

Let’s conduct a little experiment this Sunday. Trawl the Internet and list the first ten stories you find that body-shame, slut-shame or fat-shame women. If nine of these ten stories don’t have a woman’s name on the byline, I will eat my own ‘spare tire’. 

For some reason, women seem to take particular pleasure in dissing their own sex. She has fat legs. She shows too much cleavage. She is a slut. She has a muffin top. She slept her way to the top. She has too much cellulite. She is a bad mother. She hates kids because she can’t have any of her own. She is old. She is ugly. It’s all dressed up in pretty words, and sometimes with faux concern, but that’s what it all boils down to.

And then, of course, there are the double standards. George Clooney is the most eligible bachelor at 53. Amal Alammudin, that undeserving wretch of a barrister at law, is lucky to have snared him (how on earth did she manage that?). Jennifer Aniston, at 45, is a washed-up old hag who has been reduced to dating B-list stars like Vince Vaughan and Justin Theroux after she was divorced by Brad Pitt. And do you think the poor thing will ever have a baby? (With those shriveled up ovaries? Are you kidding?)

And that’s just the media. But in real life, too, the ones taking the most pleasure in this sort of stuff will be other women. They will be tut-tutting in fake sympathy when a friend gets dumped by her boyfriend (“Poor thing! I never did think he would marry her!). They will be the ones going nudge-nudge, wink-wink when a colleague gets promoted (“Didn’t I tell you she was sleeping with the boss!”) And they are the ones who will make you feel bad about your body (“Wow! Aren’t you brave to wear that!”)

Kelly Valen wrote about this in her book Twisted Sisterhood: Unravelling the Dark Legacy of Female Friendships, which created quite a stir when it came out in 2010. Valen conducted a survey among a random sampling of 3020 women from the ages of 15 to 86, and came up with some startling results: 84 per cent of the respondents felt they had “suffered terribly” at the hands of other women while 88 per cent had felt currents of “meanness and negativity emanating from other women”. But what gave me hope was this: 96 per cent of respondents said they wanted “something better for girls and women”.

But that ‘something better’ can only come if we better ourselves. The only way to create a genuine sisterhood is to be true sisters to one another. If you want to be one of that number, then here’s a ready primer of do’s and don’ts for you (feel free to write in with your own!):

• Don’t treat younger women in the workplace as a threat. If you can’t bring yourself to mentor them, fine. Just treat them the same as you would male co-workers. No special favours, but no snide comments either.
• Do try and create safe spaces where women can share their stories, lean on one another for support, and learn from each other’s experiences. This doesn’t have to be a formal forum; in fact, it could even be a virtual chatroom. But it helps immensely to have a platform where you can speak honestly with one another, even if you do so anonymously.
• Don’t be judgmental. What works for you may not necessarily be the best choice for someone else. Everyone’s life plan does not have to look like yours. Some women will choose to work; others will want to devote themselves to their families; and yet others will try and achieve a mix of both. Some will revel in being career women; others will find their purpose in being earth mothers. Every one of these choices is as valid as the other. Try and respect that.
• Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. If you feel the urge to say something bitchy, imagine it’s being said about you and the urge will pass. (And if it doesn’t, bite your tongue!)
• Don’t try to be ‘one of the boys’ if it involves the objectification of women colleagues at work. It may be tempting to laugh along, but remember it could (and probably will) be you at the receiving end one day – if it hasn’t happened already behind your back.
• And finally, do try and be kind. Pay a compliment. Praise a colleague. Offer practical help where needed. Be supportive with words if you can’t with deeds. Be there. Be a sister.

Neighbour’s envy

That’s usually the starting point of a mid-life crisis

I have a theory about the much maligned mid-life crisis. It’s not so much panic engendered by the thought of what you haven’t achieved (and are now unlikely to) half-way through your life. It’s actually angst, kicked off by envy about all that your peers have managed to accomplish in the same period.

It’s not about how you have missed the bus; but how other people have zoomed ahead in their custom-made Harley Davidsons. It’s not about how your life sucks; it’s about how everyone else’s life is so much better. It’s not about how you aren’t living the dream you fantasized about when you were young; it’s about how that joker from the back of the class seems to be living it on your behalf.

Yes, if you ask me, a mid-life crisis is really nothing more than a bad case of terminal envy. And it’s usually brought on by a close examination of what your friends and colleagues have achieved – while you cower in the loser’s corner.

It’s the kind of peer pressure that you never had to contend with in the schoolroom. After all, in those days you were convinced that you were going to grow up to become a star.

You would write a best-selling novel, which would be optioned by Hollywood. You would become best friends with Steven Spielberg and Harrison Ford. George Clooney would have a mild flirtation with you in between girlfriends. Jay Leno and David Letterman would be vying with one another to have you on their shows. You would fly your own airplane like John Travolta (though you’d probably give a miss to all that Scientology nonsense).

Or you would become a world-class cricketer, totting up centuries and notches on your belt with equal facility. You would get within breathing distance of Sunil Gavaskar’s record, you would be an all-rounder to rival Kapil Dev, like Imran Khan, you’d be another big boy who played at night in more ways than one.

Whatever your dream when you were young – whether it involved sports, the movies or best-selling books – I am sure it always had three elements firmly in place: fame, money, power (though not necessarily in that order). And of course, sex. That was a given if you had fame, money and power. But not just any old sex – it was always sex with a woman or man whom the world lusted after but you had snug in your bed.

Well, 20 years on, things aren’t looking quite as peachy, are they?

If you are like most of us, you’re probably stuck in a dead-end job that doesn’t give you enough satisfaction, money or free time. Your spouse doesn’t look like Angelina Jolie or Brad Pitt. Your kids treat you as some kind of bad joke rather than a hero or even a role model. The only holidays you can afford are off-season package holidays in a crummy resort in Goa – and that just once every two years.

And then you open the paper one day and see that that git from your school, that idiot who used to copy your homework every single day, has been appointed the head of an international banking corporation. Or that girl who used to come at the bottom of the class has published her first novel to rave reviews.

You log on to Facebook and find that your friends are having the best time in Koh Samui or the Maldives. The villa here is fantastic, reads their update, wish you were here. Well, so do you – but you can’t afford the air fare let alone the stratospheric cost of the said villa.

You go to your college reunion after many years and schlep out of your Maruti only to find a slew of Mercedes Benzes, Jaguars and BMWs lined outside. Everyone inside is holding forth on the million-dollar deals they negotiated in the past week, they are parading their trophy second wives who all look like Kareena Kapoor in her size zero phase. They hold forth about how their kids have got scholarships to Harvard and Yale (not that they need it, you understand, they can totally afford the fees) and how they’re planning to buy an apartment in Manhattan to be near them.

Honestly, who wouldn’t have a mid-life crisis listening to all these uber-success stories?

You just have to look at poor Vinod Kambli to see what I mean. Here is this young gifted cricketer, best friends with the batting prodigy of all times, convinced that he is going to go places. And yet while his buddy Sachin goes from one batting triumph to the other, poor old Vinod gets left further and further behind on the road to fame and glory.

Are you surprised then that he ended up on Sach Ka Saamna, holding forth on how Sachin could have done just a bit more for him?

Of course, not everybody having a mid-life crisis chooses to self-destruct on national television. Some men have affairs with their secretaries or run off with women young enough to be their daughters. Some women take up shopping as a vocation, others take to horizontal jogging with their fitness instructors. And then there are those who buy a big-ticket car that announces they’ve arrived, even though it’s clear to everyone that they haven’t even got started.

Everyone deals with a mid-life crisis in their own way. But in almost every case, it is sparked off by a bad case of envy.