When Finding the Odd Girl Out Becomes Female Bonding

Why do so many women have stories about one member of a friend group being suddenly ousted?

Photo by Ben White on Unsplash

In what could probably be described as one of my villain origin stories, when I was twelve, my friends told me we would “play Survivor” at lunch (it was 2002 and the show Survivor was pretty big, although my mom told me it made a mockery of those who survived 9/11.) They proceeded to stage a “joke” voting ceremony wherein they voted one person off the lunch table to be banished from our friend group. Unbeknownst to me, it wasn’t a joke, and I was the person being voted off, complete with the unironic utterance of the phrase “The tribe has spoken” by a girl wearing a Winnie the Pooh sweatshirt. (Yes, they did a heckin’ cultural appropriation).

My friends had been plotting this amongst themselves for weeks, meeting up behind my back to talk about what a liability I was to the group. I had even picked up on their coldness and asked them if I had done anything wrong, and for weeks they insisted I was imagining it. Then, on that fateful day, they presented me with examples of all the things I had done to bother them—none of which they ever mentioned to me before.

Generally, I’d say that if you’re a woman who believes all other women are dramatic and catty, and as a result you only hang out with guys, the problem is probably you, or perhaps you’ve just had limited experience with women. Despite my own “odd girl out” experience, I still believe most women are normal, and to this day most of my friends are women. But for a while now, I’ve noticed a particular pattern of female behavior, especially in a group dynamic: bonding together in secret to oust one member of the group. I don’t think my experience was that unusual.