American woman, stay away from me

One of the best girl fights ever happened this weekend.

It can’t be classified as a “cat… One of the best girl fights ever happened this weekend.

It can’t be classified as a “cat fight” because it was a knock down, drag out, last-woman-standing kind of fight. And it was scary.

Friday afternoon, my roommates and I traveled to Alliance, Ohio – pretty much the middle of nowhere – to visit a friend for her birthday. She goes to a small, private college where everyone knows everyone – and all of their business.

I should have known the evening was going to be rough when we walked into a living room full of die-hard Ohioan young men crowded around a television watching the Cleveland Indians lose. Those 13 innings were cruel and unusual punishment. I thought I was going to be shot when I nonchalantly asked if anyone knew the score of the BoSox (Boston Red Sox) vs. Yankees game.

Two hours or so later, the house was filled and we were listening to a mix of Sean Paul and country. But after all, in this daycare/house/gas station there was a four-wheeler parked in the foyer.

There I was, a lone Steelers fan in Browns country, standing my ground despite verbal assaults against the black and gold. I had just gotten five Browns fans to admit that the Steelers were robbed in the Patriots (Patriots) game when a girl, standing not even two feet away from me, was suddenly attacked.

When I say attacked, I mean another girl grabbed her by the hair and started pounding her fist in her face. However, it didn’t take long for the damsel in distress to respond. She body-slammed her attacker and soon they were rolling around on the floor.

By this point, I was basically in the corner curled up in the fetal position, sucking my thumb and shivering uncontrollably.

I haven’t seen fur fly like that since the seventh grade, when two girls on my cheerleading squad went at it in the locker room. You don’t mess around when it comes to serious business like painting signs for the junior high football team.

Eventually, the girls were separated. Insults were flying across the room and another spat soon broke out between about five girls. It was a typical Jerry Springer three-ring circus.

The appropriate people were kicked out and I finally felt somewhat safe again. After that,I decided not to make any more comments about how great the Steelers are; I kind of enjoy having my face intact.

The more I thought about it, the odder the entire situation seemed to me. Neither of the girls was drunk and the reasons behind the rumble were insignificant. I had always considered physical fighting to be more the male population’s answer to problems.

McGill University conducted a study on men and women aged 18-30 to test for “gender differences in the manifestation of alcohol-induced aggression.” As anticipated, men who were intoxicated were more aggressive than the men who were not. The results were somewhat surprising when it came to the women, however.

Both sober and intoxicated groups of women showed aggression comparable to the intoxicated men when provoked. This suggests that women can indeed be as aggressive as men, and they don’t always need alcohol to be so.

So, perhaps the throw down that I witnessed this weekend is typical for Ohioans. While maybe not so typical here, there is one thing I notice a lot of women have a penchant for: the grudge.

Nope, not that stupid movie with Sarah Michelle Gellar in Japan. I’m talking about the seemingly innate quality women have that renders them unable to forget past offenses.

While I’ve seen guys duke it out over a girl or even over a Madden tournament, I’ve also seen them go back to being best friends the next day. It seems as though they get it out of their system and move on. I’m not saying that there aren’t certainly occasions that call for a grudge to stand, but more often than not, guys forgive and forget.

For women, seeing a boyfriend’s ex-girlfriend or – heaven forbid – the girl who stepped on their Manolo Blahniks at that party, can make their blood boil.

So is this a bad thing? It depends. Are you happy being hostile, ladies? If so, continue on your path of destruction, leaving other women trembling in your wake. But to me, the feeling of forgiveness is much more fulfilling. I suspect holding grudge after grudge is the very thing that makes some women so angry and easily provoked. In the end, it takes a lot more energy to hold a grudge – and break someone’s face – than it does to just let it go.

To place against Jessica in the next WWE championship, e-mail her at jrp32@pitt.edu.