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My mom was a Vietnamese refugee after the war, so she’s been through a lot. She also had her first kid at 20 years old and sacrificed much of her mental health to stay with my dad for 20+ years. Fortunately, she left him a few years ago and has been better since.
She told me a story though today about her friend that made me cringe extremely hard.
She said her friend hired two strippers for her husband’s birthday party…
I visibly cringed and said yikes… she said, “I know. I would never be okay with it too. But she seemed cool with it I guess.”
Cue me trying to articulate what “cool girl” from the gone girl monologue teaches about being a pick me.
My mom seemed to halfway understand, but not entirely…
She tried to excuse him accepting it because “it was a surprise” and “there were people there watching”. But I shook my head in disagreement because I don’t think a hvm should have accepted it when he saw what was planned. The fact that her friend planned this at all is a sign she knows or thinks her husband enjoys this kind of disrespect…
I tried to tell her a cool girl / pick me is someone who does whatever the guy likes - at the cost of our own mental health. And that real good men don’t want to treat their women that way.
She tried to belittle the problem a bit by saying the strippers were in cop outfits and it was only 10-15 minutes…she said she found it funny.
It just makes me sad that strip clubs and men ogling at women is so normalized that my mom is uncomfortable, but feels wrong to point it out.
She’s 54 and I’m 23 if that helps. She’s the world to me and lowkey, I don’t want her to have friends who are pick me women.
I also think she is fooling herself to believe her friend genuinely loves having a husband who likes strippers as a gift...
I needed some reassurance that I'm not crazy too since my mom didn't understand what a pick-me is. Is it wrong that I think of her friend that way ?
I don't think is wrong. I think it's great that you two can have such a conversation, despite the cultural and generarional divide. Don't take this for granted!
I think your mom kicks ass as she left her husband and also said she wouldn't be ok with the stripper thing. So I don't think a pickmeish friend will have that much influence over her. She probably values this friendship for other reasons (it isn't easy to make friends as an adult), and is just trying not to judge her friend too much. But she seems the kind of woman who knows her values. In my experience, older generations tend to be more tolerant to the flaws of friends and family, which can be both a good and a bad thing.
Why don't you try to explain to her why not being a pickme is important to you and what does it mean to you? I'm sure if you take the focus off her friend, she will get it.