First of all, I know, I know – many people would think me
ludicrous to base any deep discussion on the goings-on of Made in Chelsea: Ibiza. But while past story arcs have appeared
somewhat dubious to say the least, the latest love triangle – which has spilled
out into the Twittersphere – seems very real, and has opened up some really
interesting debates. Not least, in my opinion, in its constant referring to the
unwritten rules that female friends should live their lives by – the ostensible
‘girl code.’
For those of you who (delete as appropriate) are missing
out/would never watch that drivel, the ‘love triangle’ in question centres
around Sam – a blonde, uninspiring posh bloke who was basically allowed onto
the show because of his sister, and who acts as though his drunken lads holiday
to Ibiza is a spiritual retreat through Goa. Somehow, Sam managed to persuade
his long-term (and long-suffering) girlfriend – waspishly pretty Tiffany, whose
entire raison d'être seems to be getting angry whilst waving a wine glass and
is therefore my spirit animal – to go on a ‘break’ with him over the summer
whilst he went to Ibiza. One of the rules of this break was that they wouldn’t
‘get with’ any of their mutual friends. Sam, sticking to these rules for
precisely six minutes, immediately started seeing fellow holiday pal Mimi, a
Canadian whose entire previous storyline on the show had revolved around her inappropriate
flirtation with somebody else’s boyfriend.
In this week’s episode, the shit hit the proverbial fan –
Tiff showed up on a yacht, cried, waved her wine glass around dramatically and
dumped Sam; Sam looked crestfallen and promptly dumped Mimi, who also cried;
then Tiff yelled at her. So far so standard reality TV.
But what really interests me about this storyline is the
social media response to it. The angle has not been sheer amazement that Sam
managed to convince not one but two women
to enter into non-relationships with him, but instead anger that in allowing
herself to get carried away by a holiday romance, Mimi has broken the girl code. She is the scarlet woman,
responsible now for ruining not one but two relationships with her big soulful
eyes and her flexible, yoga-practicing body.
Tiffany herself has barely mentioned Sam online but has
turned viciously on Mimi, describing her as ‘easy,’ and – most interestingly -
posting a whole host of tweets about the sort of girl you should be (and, by proxy, the type of girl she is suggesting Mimi
is not). She wore a top on her Instagram with the slogans ‘All Girls’,
captioning it ‘When women support each other incredible things happen,’ and
re-tweeted a number of pro-feminist type quotes:
‘The best kind of
friendships are fierce lady friendships where you aggressively believe in each
other, defend each other, and think the other deserves the world.’
The underlying message here is clear: Mimi didn’t follow
these rules and therefore she is not a good friend and she is not a good
‘girl.’ And there are so many problems with this that I barely know where to
begin.
The first issue is that the ‘rules’ to this code, like any
unwritten moral principles, are vague and potentially far-reaching, and therefore
easy to accidentally break. Different definitions I have seen when doing a bit
of research on this range from ‘not stealing your friend’s boyfriend,’ to ‘not
getting with someone if another friend has said they fancy him,’ to ‘not going
near a mate’s ex until they’re over it.’ For numerous reasons, none of these
statements are particularly well-defined – for example, what is a ‘friend?’
There’s no real explanation of how well Mimi and Tiffany even knew each other –
is it enough if you’ve just met a girl at parties a few times? If you follow
each other on Instagram? What’s the definition here? When is somebody
officially ‘over’ their ex – and can you just keep a list of men you’d prefer
your mates not to get with? If you followed all these examples you could easily
cover just about every boy on earth if you weren’t careful, or if –speaking
from personal experience here – you attended a very small university and girls
outnumbered boys 2 to 1.
‘Girls should always choose their friends over boys,’ one online
article blares confidently, echoing some of the girls in this week’s episode of
Made In Chelsea. What – always? So if a friend of mine picked a
row with my husband, should I divorce him? Even if I think she’s in the wrong?
Why are female relationships suddenly held above male ones?
But even putting the confusion to one side – the main
implication, and my real problem, with holding girls up to a moral code such as
this is that it allows a form of girl-on-girl slut shaming and it simultaneously
lets men slide off the hook.
If a man cheats on his girlfriend (or on a sort-of
girlfriend, or someone he’s seeing, etc) the only person who is truthfully to
blame for ruining that relationship is the man in question. The ‘other woman’
may well be ruining a different relationship – i.e. her friendship with the
girlfriend – but she does not end the relationship. Not ever. Not even if she
behaves in a way that might be considered ‘flirty’ or, god forbid, ‘slutty.’
The only person who betrayed the love between Tiffany and Sam was Sam. As
Taylor Swift once wisely said, ‘No one can steal your boyfriend from you if he
doesn’t want to leave.’
Mimi made the decision that a potential relationship with
Sam was worth ruining her friendship (whatever that friendship was) with
Tiffany. That’s all. That is hurtful,
but these feelings – love, lust, whatever you want to call it – are strong.
Mimi did not choose to end Tiffany’s
relationship with Sam. He did that all on his own, and to somehow let him get
away with that by acting as though he were ensnared and that she should have
known better is indicative of the way we treat women as a whole.
We are absolutely obsessed in this society with rating women
as ‘good’ or ‘evil.’ It’s not enough to think of Mimi as a flawed human being,
a girl who knew it was a stupid idea to form an attachment to somebody else’s
boyfriend (something she frequently and freely admitted) but allowed herself to
be confused by the circumstances and her own feelings into making a mistake. It
can’t be possible that she was misled by a man who wanted to get into bed with
her, or that she was naïve, or that she got carried away and didn’t really
think of the consequences. No – she must be bad.
Tiffany, therefore, can hold herself up as the good girl – the good mate, the
one who would never do such a thing
to another girl. The trouble is, people – and that includes
women – are not that binary. Good people can be stupid, or thoughtless, or even
cruel – and yet we don’t appear to be able to make that distinction. Girls are
always good, or always bad – that’s their only option.
That’s why it was uncomfortable in this week’s episode when
Tiffany made a faux pas of her own. She described Mimi as a ‘dumpling,’ leading
to Mimi releasing a video on Instagram about body-shaming. Public reaction was
confused; Tiffany had not followed the correct trajectory. She was meant to be
the good girl – and yet clearly calling your size 6 co-star fat is not exactly
‘supporting each other to make incredible things happen’ type behaviour. Some
tried to dismiss Tiffany’s behaviour on the dubious grounds that ‘stealing your
boyfriend is worse’ – so okay, her behaviour was wrong, but ‘less wrong.’
Others turned on her at once, because she’d shown herself to be, yet again, not
in line with the moral code we girls are all meant to follow. ‘I’ve lost all
respect for her,’ one girl tweeted crossly, because apparently your whole
character and personality can be completely dismissed if you lose your temper
for five seconds by mistake.
But Tiffany herself summed it up in her response to the
issue: ‘Definitely do not agree with or condone body shaming but in the heat of
the moment we all say things out of anger… I’m a girl who is going to make
mistakes occasionally that you get to watch and (some) judge.’
Tiffany is right. Girls do say things out of anger. We also
say – and do – things out of lust. Or out of fear, envy, love – a million
emotions we do not always control, and which do not all adhere to the standards
that we hold each other up to so fiercely.
So maybe, before we throw stones, we should look to our perilous glass
houses, and be a little kinder before we berate girls for failing to meet
standards we never know, until tested, if we could hold up ourselves. Maybe that would be really supporting each
other, and maybe then, truly incredible things would happen.
Honestly, I think Tiff has shown a lot in the past 2 episodes she was in. She made some slut shaming, body shaming, and xenophobic remarks. I'm not saying she's a bad person because I do not know her in real life but all the things that came out of her mouth was mean. And honestly, even last episode calling Julius the most boring person and just snapping at everyone. It's not a good look. If you recall, she used Julius before to make Sam jealous and now brought Pablo to the dinner party hosted by Julius (the one she bad mouthed) to make Sam jealous, presumably. I know she's only human but she has consecutively shown ill-natured and awful traits on national television and she never apologises for anything, believing that she's right (sincerely, at least). I don't think she's as mature as she would like to perceive herself, she acts so "high school" and just awful. I hope one day she learns from all her mistakes and become more graceful.
ReplyDeleteWow, very nicely written.
ReplyDeleteIMO people laid blame on Mimi because she was not naïve to the situation. If you choose to go after a boy who is not truly single and you know the girl then people do not feel sorry for you when it goes pete tong.
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely agree with your comment! Yes, this article was well written however it seems to leave out the fact that Mimi openly admitted she didn't care if she was jumping in with both feet with Sam even tho Sam DID inform her of the wishy washy "break rules" that he & Tiff had established prior to their summer "break!"
DeleteUnfortunately for Mimi the fact that she's nonchalantly done this with Sam AND Fred it just makes her look insensitive in general to others feelings and like a bit of a biotch. If more people in our world actually chose to "go with their gut feelings" we'd definitely have a much easier go of it not to mention fewer retarded hookups!