Take Out the Trash Talk

I don’t think that male bosses are any nicer or any less terrifying than female ones. But if there’s one difference between men and women, it’s how we talk about each other. Men seem more observational, more removed from someone’s situation.

Man: “They got in a fight at the party the other night.”

Woman: “They got in a fight in front of everyone because he ignores her in public, and then she started talking to another guy to make him jealous and…” You get the point.

Yesterday I was riding the subway from 14th street to 72nd street and across from me were three junior high girls who looked like they’d just gotten out of school. They had their backpacks, and their snacks, and their fangs were out. There was someone in their class they didn’t like, and they spent all 58 blocks talking about her. Faux “panic attacks” and inability to keep up and fakeness and on and on. It starts at an early age. Why do we feel the need to tear each other to pieces, aside from the obvious fact that it makes us feel better about our own shortcomings? Boredom? It bonds us with other women when we have a common distaste? There are movies that negatively reflect male bosses too: Office Space, Swimming with Sharks, Fight Club, any movie about Wall Street, but none with such critical acclaim as say The Devil Wears Prada(part of which we can attribute to the brilliant Meryl Streep). But it was all initially spawned by one woman’s innate ability to talk trash, and do it really well.