http://www.slate.com/id/2260952/entry/2260953/
I'm gonna spoiler my own thoughts on the issue, but I'd like to see what everyone else thinks. I'm hoping we can avoid the doldrums of "she deserved it for being a slut" and "she was a perfect innocent victim, let the evil mean girls burn", but I'll take what I can get.
I'm gonna spoiler my own thoughts on the issue, but I'd like to see what everyone else thinks. I'm hoping we can avoid the doldrums of "she deserved it for being a slut" and "she was a perfect innocent victim, let the evil mean girls burn", but I'll take what I can get.
It's a tough situation. On the one-hand, you have to feel sympathy for Phoebe. She really was in a bad spot, all things considered; she was feeling alone, isolated from the father she obviously missed greatly, and feeling like she didn't have a good support system. She reached out to people (especially boys) she felt were sympathetic to her, and latched on to those proto-relationships as a sort of anchor for her life. Then, being a teenage girl (who often do have trouble distinguishing between the different and often-conflicting feelings of being supported, being cared for, and wanting to sleep with someone), she slept with one of them; who happened to have an on-again-off-again girlfriend.
She did the honorable thing, stepped up and admitted it to the jilted girlfriend, but it pissed off the boy who had been (in her eyes) a sort of replacement father figure (yeah... It's messed up). For want of a healthy, stable, relationship, she shored up her sense of self-worth by going after different guys, and kept stepping on toes. She couldn't divorce the need for a good, supportive, friend from the need for a boyfriend. Through no apparent malice, she ended up throwing herself into the normal hormonal mix of high-school drama as a focal point for issues.
That usually takes two forms, depending on how the other parties feel. Sometimes, it goes inward to the existing group. A schism forms, wherein the members of the group(s) split over what happened with the girl, and the girl ends up more or less a Macguffin in the broader story; she ends up not being dealt with individually, because she ceases to matter personally. Basically, if the girls had blamed the boyfriends, Phoebe herself would have been rendered irrelevant.
The other option is that the group pushes back. They reason that since they were happy prior to this, the fault must be with the interloper. As a way to foist personal responsibility off, they blame the 'other girl' for 'stealing the man' away. He didn't pursue and sleep with another girl, a heinous slutbag seduced him away with her wiles. It's a way for Sean to say "I'm not a bad guy" and his girlfriend to say "it wasn't his fault, really". Sean's reaction (blaming Phoebe for telling Sean's girlfriend) makes it sound like he was the first to try to shift blame to her.
It happened over, and over, again, where she was basically being used as a scapegoat for whatever strife she was connected to, until it became really abusive. Throw in an overly dramatic and strident girl who seems to have thrived on being part of drama (we all know the type), and who is hyperdefensive about the men who "belong" to her friends, and it's a recipe for disaster
So... Yeah, you kind of have to feel bad for her.
At the same time, though, consider the other people. You're a young man in a good relationship who had ended up hooking up with another girl while on break from your current GF. The other girl goes to your GF and tells her about the entire sordid affair; wouldn't you be justifiably pissed at her? You're a girl whose boyfriend slept with another girl, who you see as having (essentially) aggressively pursued him and thrown herself at him; wouldn't you think she was a slut trying to steal your man? Wouldn't you become petty, petulant, and biatchy at her? Wouldn't you show her (at best) a cold shoulder, and more likely chew her out? I'm pretty sure I would.
The biggest issue was that Phoebe didn't have either enough internal wherewithal to withstand the barrage, nor enough outside support to actually prop her up. She literally threw herself at anyone (especially male) who seemed sympathetic and like someone who might be there for her, which made her vulnerable, and shows she was vulnerable. It's... Just kind of sad all around, really.
She did the honorable thing, stepped up and admitted it to the jilted girlfriend, but it pissed off the boy who had been (in her eyes) a sort of replacement father figure (yeah... It's messed up). For want of a healthy, stable, relationship, she shored up her sense of self-worth by going after different guys, and kept stepping on toes. She couldn't divorce the need for a good, supportive, friend from the need for a boyfriend. Through no apparent malice, she ended up throwing herself into the normal hormonal mix of high-school drama as a focal point for issues.
That usually takes two forms, depending on how the other parties feel. Sometimes, it goes inward to the existing group. A schism forms, wherein the members of the group(s) split over what happened with the girl, and the girl ends up more or less a Macguffin in the broader story; she ends up not being dealt with individually, because she ceases to matter personally. Basically, if the girls had blamed the boyfriends, Phoebe herself would have been rendered irrelevant.
The other option is that the group pushes back. They reason that since they were happy prior to this, the fault must be with the interloper. As a way to foist personal responsibility off, they blame the 'other girl' for 'stealing the man' away. He didn't pursue and sleep with another girl, a heinous slutbag seduced him away with her wiles. It's a way for Sean to say "I'm not a bad guy" and his girlfriend to say "it wasn't his fault, really". Sean's reaction (blaming Phoebe for telling Sean's girlfriend) makes it sound like he was the first to try to shift blame to her.
It happened over, and over, again, where she was basically being used as a scapegoat for whatever strife she was connected to, until it became really abusive. Throw in an overly dramatic and strident girl who seems to have thrived on being part of drama (we all know the type), and who is hyperdefensive about the men who "belong" to her friends, and it's a recipe for disaster
So... Yeah, you kind of have to feel bad for her.
At the same time, though, consider the other people. You're a young man in a good relationship who had ended up hooking up with another girl while on break from your current GF. The other girl goes to your GF and tells her about the entire sordid affair; wouldn't you be justifiably pissed at her? You're a girl whose boyfriend slept with another girl, who you see as having (essentially) aggressively pursued him and thrown herself at him; wouldn't you think she was a slut trying to steal your man? Wouldn't you become petty, petulant, and biatchy at her? Wouldn't you show her (at best) a cold shoulder, and more likely chew her out? I'm pretty sure I would.
The biggest issue was that Phoebe didn't have either enough internal wherewithal to withstand the barrage, nor enough outside support to actually prop her up. She literally threw herself at anyone (especially male) who seemed sympathetic and like someone who might be there for her, which made her vulnerable, and shows she was vulnerable. It's... Just kind of sad all around, really.
