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COMPETITION
Evolutionary biologists would say competition between women is a survival instinct. If another woman comes into your cave enticing your mate, jealous feelings encourage you to protect what's yours. The competition therefore ensures that your mate stays around to help raise the offspring, and provide meat for the family. The theory also says competition may have developed through natural selection. Cavewoman Sarah and cavewoman Pam know caveman Tom is genetically the cream of the crop, and his children will have a better chance in life. If Sarah feels competition and works hard at mating with Tom, while Pam doesn't even know the race started, Tom chooses Sarah, and Pam's DNA never get out of the gate. Or Pam mates with genetically inferior caveman Bill, and her DNA die at the hand of a saber-toothed tiger. So feeling jealous of the "short skirt bimbo" may be your way of trying to catch the best male, and then keep him, so that your genes live on.
A potential problem with the theory is that jealous behavior often turns men off -- counter productive to the whole mating dance. The other hitch is that by this time, you'd expect all women to have developed extreme, pathological levels of jealousy, because the non-competitive females would have died out. So let's consider some other reasons for female jealousy.
SOCIAL
The media usually sits in the hot seat in discussions like this, but do an experiment: take any fashion magazine and find someone who looks like you. I did this recently while conducting a women's retreat, and none of the 45 women found an self-reflective image in the pages. I heard a lot of, "I'd love to look like that," and "I'd kill for that stomach!"
From very early ages, little girls are taught the importance of looking good, and socialized into competing on a visual level. Little girls are told more often than little boys, that their misbehavior is 'ugly'.
Little girls then grow up into women who rate their own physical appearances with a harsh and critical eye. Conversely, even if the beer belly now protrudes over the belt, men will stand before a mirror, suck in their stomachs and say, "Still lookin' good."
One consistent element of eating disorders, which still predominately effect young women, relates to wanting to live up to the perfect female image as portrayed in movies, on television, and in print advertisements. Many women with eating disorders report routinely going through a hypercritical survey process as they compare their own body size, muscle tone, skin quality, etc. with every other woman in the room. If she doesn't win the competition, self-esteem suffers, and it's back to the treadmill or into the bathroom to purge up dinner.
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