The bathroom ego boost. You know that girl you run into at the sink; she has had maybe one too many Shark Bowls and starts going off about how great your hair is, how that ex never should've cheated and how you deserve to be president?

You know that girl in the bathroom. It has just crept past midnight at the bar and you both are alone in the bathroom mirror admiring/criticizing your reflections side by side. She tells you how great your shoes are and you exclaim how much you love her hair and ohmygod that dress. You guys part ways and that is that. Drunk and in a bathroom is one of the most vulnerable and rare places you can find girls openly complimenting each other. In a society that is constantly thriving on personal success and infatuated by individual failure, it seems that more and more women are more focused on tearing one another down in a fierce competition of who can do, wear or be better rather than lifting each other up in a competition of how great can we be. 

We, as women, are often times too proud or too embarrassed to tell a random girl passing by in the street or in line at CVS that we really freaking love what she has going on. Instead of confidently complimenting other women, we feel jealous, seeking a way to criticize a person who has what we wish we had. We use material possessions and social media to manipulate our real personality into what we perceive to be the ideal personality. Instead of striving to be the best version of ourselves, we are striving to be a better version of someone else.   

As college students, every seemingly small move seems to come with high stakes. Do I study abroad or look for an internship? What if I don’t get accepted into the business school this semester? What about grad school? The question, “what’s next?” permeates every decision that we make and leaves us in constant competition with one another. 

Life seems to have become a lot more about pushing each other down to elevate ourselves individually rather than building each other up to elevate our gender as a whole. The more that we embrace the “bathroom girl” version of ourselves — albeit a little messy — but a lot honest, a lot loving- the better off we all will be.