Girls and Competition

According to Wikipedia, “Competition occurs naturally between living organisms which coexist in the same environment.”

I’ve been thinking about girls and competition. There are several reasons for this:

1. In my fencing class the teacher tells us (but especially the girls/women) to be “quick and aggressive.” Apparently, girls often have trouble with the “aggressive” part. We don’t want to hurt anyone. Is that so bad?

2. During “Singled Out,” Jewell’s dating show, the guys were markedly more competitive than the girls were.

3. Um. I’ve had opportunities to observe covert competition recently. Well. I think it was covert competition. Hard to say. It was covert after all.

All that to say, I think society socializes girls to be uncomfortable with many forms of competitive behavior, even within appropriate contexts.

According to Aristotle (because I just had to drag him into this), there is a mean between loving honor too much and too little.

I’m trying to figure that out.

~ by maylin2 on February 15, 2008.