Women We Won't See

When women play the comparison game, I’ve noticed something lacking.
The women seen as “having it all together” have their own weak areas ignored by others in order for this idea of them as “put together” to continue. The women who are self proclaimed “hot messes” don’t often show their strengths to others. I think this is a combination of women choosing to limit what they display to the world in order to fit in, and others placing a woman in a particular category and holding her to it.

What this, oh so conveniently, does is flatten women. It removes her dimensions, her complexity. Because the comparison game only really works on caricatures of women, not on women themselves.

This is why the comparison game is so objectifying, but the thought processes that make it possible might even be considered healthy. Women tend to see mostly the positives in others, and the negatives in ourselves. When this acts as an incentive to learn new skills and grow, it’s great! But the comparison game grows out of the negative mental narrations that are stifled from action.
This plays out in mental narrations like this:

"She manages to homeschool AND show up to mass on time. Why can't I get my one kid's shoes on?"

"That family had a whole pew of kids sit through mass THE WHOLE TIME. Yet every Sunday is a wrestling match in my pew."

These mental narrations can only happen because we block out all the things that other person doesn't do/doesn't do well, and cognitively emphasize all the things we perceive as lacking in ourselves. We don't notice that the mom who is on time and well organized does not have kids wearing well coordinated outfits and the dirty dishes sit in the sink until after dinner.
We get in the habit of picking on our personal weaknesses, and ignoring those things that come naturally.

"I could never do that." That is the phrase that seems to closely follow the comparison narration.

In most contexts where I have heard this phrase, it has been uttered as a way of displaying humility, as a socially acceptable form of self-loathing, or as a way to place the person(s) who do such a thing in an othered category.

It's a truth and a lie. It is true that you might actually not have the skills to do said thing right now. You might have no inclination to do said thing (and if it's not a matter of faith and morals, don't feel like you need to do it!). But the "never" is the snag.

There is a spiritual danger to this thinking.

The Devil would love for women to believe that they can't. That they are not capable of living out their chrism while mothering. Of growing skills. Of confronting those things in themselves that are raw and tender.

Refusal to see the whole person is a refusal to live as the Body of Christ. A refusal to be Church.
We have to cut out the comparison game because it pulls us apart internally, it pulls us apart from each other, and ultimately it pulls us away from closeness with God.

How have you seen the comparison game play out in your own life? Does this resonate with you?