Allison McNeely
Last year in south Florida, one teenage girl killed another over a boy.
It’s a typical, nauseatingly salacious story. Sarah Ludeman was dating Josh Camacho, who was cheating on her with his ex, Rachel Wade. Sarah and Rachel taunted each other, online, over text, in person – often ending in physical altercations. Josh was also seeing other girls, including someone named Erin, who he got pregnant. All the girls knew about each other, but they still keep seeing Josh, and mostly reserved their anger and hatred for each other, as opposed to the boy at the centre of it all.
The climax came when Sarah, sick of Rachel taunting her, drove over to her apartment with a group of friends intending to fight her. Rachel was prepared, she had a very sharp steak knife, and in the tussle of their fight, Rachel stabbed Sarah in the shoulder and the heart. She died within the hour. Rachel is now facing a life sentence.
Before I get into the girls, I would like to note that I think this case is another prime example of the holes in the justice system that can harm women. No, Josh never told Rachel to kill Sarah, but he is has an ethical and moral responsibility in this case. He is the root cause of this tragedy. There should be some recognition of his involvement, we have punishments for other crimes that address implied or negligent action. Instead, absolutely nothing will happen to him.
I don’t believe that Rachel really killed Sarah over Josh, I believe that there is so much more to it than that.
As I’ve discussed in my post about female friendships, competition is such a big part of so many female relationships. It’s omnipresent and especially strong when one woman is Type-A. Rachel was a self-sufficient woman at a young age, she got her high school GED at 16 and supported herself living in her own apartment serving tables at Applebee’s. Sarah, until meeting Josh, was a straight-A student who wanted to be a veternarian. Clearly, these girls have capability, pride and ambition. They potentially have the qualities of Type-A people who like to win.
But coupled with this capability is also the insecurity that most women struggle with. I truly do believe that women struggle with insecurity more than men. The world is set up for men to succeed, it allows them to believe in themselves to the point of error. Josh would have never forseen the tragic consequences of his sluttiness, because he was confident in himself and therefore in his mind, it was inconceivable. He did not consider the impact that his actions had on the young women around him.
By contrast, women grow up in a society that tells them that they must be perfect. They can’t just be smart or capable, they have to be beautiful, thin, able-bodied, get the guy, be classy but sexually adventurous, it goes on and on. And society loves to play women off of each other, it encourages competition. There can only be one Angelina Jolie, and if you’re not Angelina Jolie, you’ll end up as Jennifer Aniston, and someone will steal your man. Then what will you be? Insecure as all get out, that’s what.
So for the girls, I posit that it wasn’t really about Josh, it was about losing Josh. If they lost Josh, they would be a failure, because they were not perfect. Never mind that Josh was two-timing them all, in their minds, without the participation of the other girls, there would be no competition and no threat. They felt that they had to take out the threat.
Obviously, this is all my personal opinion and total extrapolation of the situation, but I don’t think it’s implausible. I’m not sure that Rachel Wade is a cold-blooded killer, I think she’s an 18-year-old girl with a lethal combination of insecurity and pride who made a tragic error. She screwed up big time, but I don’t know if she ever wanted to kill Sarah Ludeman. And we’ll never really know.
We can change the scenario that leads to these kind of tragedies. We can give girls the tools to change their habits and to know better.
Only once in my life have I ever hated another girl because a of a guy, and I will never do it again. He was not worth it and it made me feel really awful. But I eventually pulled myself out of it, because I was given the tools via strong parenting and high self-esteem to recognize the bullshit and get out. And not only that, but I was able to channel the negative feelings from that low point into greater success in the future. That attitude and confidence is learned and not innate in all women. (But yes, some women are born that lucky.)
The tragedy that comes from this story is that Sarah will have died for nothing. This story will be reported salaciously and sensationally, teen love triangle gone wrong! There will be little to no discussion about why these girls were throwing themselves into this subpar male, as opposed to taking up a new hobby or taking out a college loan.
Last summer, I worked at a day camp and supervised a mixed group of 12-13 year olds, predominantly hailing from inner city Montreal. They had behavioural problems that overwhelmed me constantly and I came home either raging or crying on more than one occasion – a mixture of anger at these kids and genuinely feeling sorry for their challenges.
Out of all of their issues, the girls troubled me the most. I had only 4-5 girls in a group of about 20, and so they were already the minority. They were taunted and bullied by the boys constantly. Miraculously, aside from the occasional scuffle, they avoided bullying each other, which going into the summer, I was sure was going to be a problem. But the girls troubled me because of their clearly dysfunctional attitudes and ideas about men, at 12-years-old.
I had two girls offer to wrestle for the boys, having already figured out that thanks to, I don’t know, muddle/soap/something wrestling at the Playboy mansion, some men like that kind of thing. I had another camper who was obsessed with my male costaff and would physically push the other girls away from him, so they couldn’t get near him. Oddly, however, she was obsessed with the idea of he and I dating, and was willing to “share” him with me. And aside from all of this, I had to deal with the typical bullying, harassment and general crappy behaviour that we tell boys is okay from an early age.
The worst part about all of this is, coming out of that summer, I don’t think I changed anything. I tried to talk to the girls and encourage them to have a little more confidence and self-respect, but it’s a difficult age and some of their behaviour reflected years of lacking a strong female role model.
Building self-esteem and self-confidence has start young, with parents and teachers and other caretakers. We have to consistently “indoctrinate” our girls from an early age, so that they have the power to not tolerate sexual harassment, to not engage in harmful competition for men and to respect themselves. We put so much fanfare into not presenting girls with distorted body images in the media, which is fabulous, but it will be all for nothing if we don’t work on their minds at the same time.
My feminism has been with me for as long as I can remember. It has evolved over time in both ideology and practice, but it’s always been there. When I was 10 years old, a boy in my class told me he wanted to have sex with me while I was waiting for the bus. I felt uncomfortable and harassed and kicked him in the balls. Not the best response, but I’m still sort of proud of my ass-kicking 10-year-old self.
I was indoctrinated so subtly and skillfully, that I actually believed for a long time that my ideas were all my own. How naive. My feminism is in part from my own interest, but was also influenced by my parents, who always encouraged me to be strong, independent and ambitious. They have always believed in me, and therefore, I can believe in myself. And at the end of the day, wage and reproductive debates aside, that’s what feminism is about.
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