The Mean Girl Antics That Shun Awkward Women & How to Respond

Written By Caroline Smith

Socially awkward women are no strangers to feeling out of place in social settings and interactions, but those feelings can be even worse when the people with whom you’re trying to interact are exhibiting behaviors that are purposefully excluding you.

In this episode, I react to the viral Jubilee YouTube video titled “Whose Girlfriend is the Most Attractive | Ranking” and point out the discreet and not so discreet ways that socially awkward women are often shunned by typical mean girl antics, and I explain how to respond to such behavior if and when it happens to you.

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Transcript:

Welcome to The Introverted Misfit Podcast with me, Caroline Smith, where we discuss topics to help awkward and anxious introverts create fulfilling relationships and build community while being their authentic selves.

Today’s podcast is about the discreet and not so discreet behaviors that women use to shun socially awkward women, and how to handle those situations when you find yourself in them.

The video that prompted me to record this episode is a YouTube video titled “Whose Girlfriend is the Most Attractive?” by Jubilee, and as soon as I saw the title of this video about a year ago, I immediately rolled my eyes because the whole premise of the video is the exact opposite of how I think women should behave in a healthy community, but I get it; it’s an entertaining video that gets a lot of clicks and views.

If you want to watch the full video - which I encourage you to do after you listen to this podcast episode - I will include a link in the description, but let me just give you a quick synopsis of what happens in this video.

There are five couples participating in this social experiment. First, the five girlfriends are asked to rank themselves from the most attractive to the least attractive. Then, the boyfriends come in afterwards and rank the girls.

I guess the point of this experiment is to portray the differences in what attributes men and women think are attractive.

So, right now you’re probably thinking, “What does this have to do with the topic of this podcast?”

Here’s how they’re related:

Within the first 3 minutes of this video, the girlfriends are introducing themselves and explaining how they and their boyfriends met, and right off the bat, you can tell that one of these girls is not like the others, and that girl’s name is Jennifer.

Firstly, I want to say that I think Jennifer is adorable, cute, feminine, and down to earth, but if you look at her compared to the other girls, her outward appearance is very different than them who I would describe as having more modern and sexy styles versus her very modest, cutesy vibe.

You can also tell when she’s introducing herself that she doesn’t have the same ultra-girly personality as the other young women and she’s very quiet.

To be honest, Jennifer is not what I would consider to be socially awkward - she just has a different style and personality than the other girls, but the reason that I titled this podcast what I titled it despite her not being socially awkward is because the way in which these girls excluded her is very similar to how I’ve experienced that women will exclude awkward women, and I’ll get into those behaviors a little later.

So I wanted use this video as an example of how you can read and understand the social cues that tell you when you’re being excluded from a group, how you can handle those situations, and how to not let it affect your self-esteem.

The introduction of this video is pretty uneventful, but it starts to go downhill immediately once they start the ranking part of the video.

Jennifer starts off the experiment by saying, and I quote, “First off, no one’s a five here. I think we’re all attractive women here,” five being the least attractive ranking on the scale.

I think she says this as a friendly ice breaker to lessen the negative impact of the utter trainwreck that is about to occur, because obviously someone is about to be told that they are the most unattractive in the group, right?

Her ice breaker is immediately followed by the first indicator of exclusionary or cliquey behavior in women, which is ignoring what you have to say.

It’s clear in the video that everyone in the room heard what she said. There’s no way they could’ve missed what she said, and in fact they were looking right at her as she was speaking. So we know they heard what she said, and yet, no one even acknowledged what she said - they didn’t answer, they didn’t agree or disagree with her, nothing.

Then, just a few seconds later we can see another social cue that the girls are shunning Jennifer, and that cue is physical separation. After ignoring Jennifer, the girls decide to start the ranking off with the category of outfits, and Jennifer tells Sky that she likes her jacket. And Sky is one of the other girls participating in this experiment.

Before we go any further I need to say that at the beginning of the video, Jennifer is separating Sky from the other three girls.

So they banter a little about Sky’s outfit and Sky actively avoids making eye contact with Jennifer, and walks right past her to reposition herself next to the other three girls. And at this point you can immediately see the clique starting to form without Jennifer: they’re laughing together, touching each other on the arm, they’re complimenting each other, all while Jennifer is being physically shut out of the group.

Also keep in mind that after Sky repositions herself, this puts Jennifer in fifth place on the scale, which is to automatically say she’s least attractive.

Now, for the next three minutes, the clique continues talking to each other and ranking themselves in a very light-hearted manner, all while not including Jennifer, and throughout the duration of the video, it’s almost like these 4 girls had an unspoken agreement with each other that Jennifer is just automatically the least attractive, and so they are purposely trying to forget that she is even part of the experiment.

Then, we see yet another social cue that suggests shunning behavior, which is lackluster responses to Jennifer’s input.

From the moment that Jennifer was in last place, every time she tried to interject herself back into the discussion, the girls are noticeably less excited when they respond to Jennifer. They went from laughing talking in high-pitched and louder voices to dryer and shorter responses, which is basically them indirectly saying, “Ehhh, we don’t really want to include you in this thing we have going on, but we’ll pretend for the sake of the experiment.”

The girls cycle through these three exclusionary behaviors for the duration of the video, and right after their final rankings, the producers ask Jennifer how she feels about being ranked last, and it’s so painstakingly obvious that her self-esteem has taken a major hit.

Here’s the thing: I don’t think it was because she was ranked last; I mean they all went into this knowing that someone would be in last place, right? I really believe that a large part of why she was visibly bothered by what happened is because of the way the four other girls were excluding her by those three behaviors: one, ignoring what she had to say; two, physically shutting her out of the discussion with no eye contact and turned backs; and three, giving lackluster responses to what she had to say.

So like I mentioned earlier, Jennifer is not being shunned because she is displaying socially awkward behavior but rather for being quieter and more introverted than the others, and looking a little different in terms of her style, but the three ways that they excluded her are pretty much the same ways that socially awkward women can be treated in social settings.

As a woman who has Autistic Spectrum Disorder which is a neurological disorder that affects my ability to communicate like most women do and to pick up on important social cues, I can pretty vividly remember what it was like to be on the receiving end of that kind of mean-girl behavior.

Because of my lack of social and communication skills I was often excluded from a lot of social circles, and eventually my self-esteem took such a turn for the worse that I began to naturally exclude myself from any interactions without even attempting to meet people, and by doing this for years, I was worsening my ability to socialize normally and my social anxiety was getting to the point where I just didn’t even even want to go outside.

I was just so scared what happened in my past would happen again, so I became a fully grown adult that couldn’t function in even low-risk social settings..

So all of that brings me to the point in this episode where I want to leave you with some motivational ways pick yourself back up when you’re surrounded by people who are intent on leaving you out of the discussion, even though you’re only crime is being a little awkward and quiet:

Number one, don’t let the mean girl antics get to you.

The truth is, whether you’re socially awkward or not, some people are just mean to be mean. Those kinds of people are the last ones who deserve any of your energy.

Even if you’re still on your journey to becoming a socially confident introvert, there are people out there who won’t let a little social awkwardness scare them away from getting to know the real you. They might even help you out by telling you the things you need to hear in the exact way you need to hear it.

Number two, give yourself grace.

So what if you’re a bit awkward in social settings? I guarantee you that every single person on this planet has things that they need to improve about themselves, and maybe your social and communication skills just happen to one aspect that needs some work.

That was certainly true for me at one point in my life, and even now I still have a few awkward tendencies, but the important thing to remember is that socials skills are something that can be improved with a little practice and a few mindset shifts. By the way, those improvements have nothing to do with changing your introverted personality. To get you started on your journey to becoming a socially confident introvert, download my 6-Step Guide to Small Talk for Awkward Introverts by clicking the link in the description.

Number three, don’t force yourself where you aren’t welcome.

We’ve probably all got stories where we were so focused on trying to fit in with people who weren’t good matches for us to begin with, and in the process we end up losing ourselves, whether you’re trying to act like an extrovert when you clearly aren’t, or trying to talk to people who, simply put, just aren’t interested in getting to know you.

Take it from someone who’s been there: do not try to force a square peg into a round hole.

Go where your personality is valued and not shunned. If you’re genuinely a nice person who is just a little quiet and socially awkward and the people with whom you want to be included have given you the signs that you’re not welcome, leave.

There is nothing worse for your mental and emotional well-being than feeling like you have to pretend to be someone you’re not just to be likeable. Your genuine, authentic self will be likeable to the right people.

That’s all for today’s episode. If enjoyed this talk, please don’t forget to hit the follow button, leave a review, and share this podcast with your fellow introverted misfits. Thanks for listening, and have a great day!

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Caroline Smith

Caroline is the founder of The Introverted Misfit, a community committed to helping socially inept people become more socially confident in themselves.

https://theintrovertedmisfit.com
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