It should be noted that "female competition" does not only refer to potential competition between women, but also includes situations where men with feminine traits may experience female competition.
In the evening, we had a barbecue at a pet-friendly guesthouse. Besides my wife and our dog, there was also a "family of four women" who were staying at the guesthouse. The hostess was accompanied by her mother, her daughter who was around 7 years old, and her baby daughter who was only a few months old. From the moment we sat down, the 7-year-old sister started to "perform" frantically. It's natural for children to have a desire to perform, but we needed to understand "why" she wanted to perform.
I am someone who is good at collecting fragmented information and deducing the underlying logic. So I realized that this was a family that already had a dog. When the sister pretended to be scared and coquettish towards our dog, only her mother didn't understand the real reason behind it. The sister kept complaining about how scary the dog was, but she refused to stay away and kept approaching the dog, swaying in front of me, and constantly performing "how scary this dog is." However, I didn't respond to her in any way, and her mother unreasonably asked her to change seats, but the little girl refused to move and insisted on sitting closest to the dog, continuing to be coquettish. Seeing that we didn't respond at all, she started singing, singing meaninglessly, even disturbing the people who were eating, but she still continued to perform crazily.
Unfortunately, my wife and I continued to ignore her. I even moved the dog further away from her. Her performance began to fade because no one paid attention to her throughout the process, and even her grandmother only cared about the little granddaughter in her arms. Later, she finally had the "plot we expected to see" - the little sister had been troubled all along, and the attention of both her grandmother and mother was drawn away. So the sister took the barbecue tongs and scissors used for cooking and said without reservation, "Mom, Mom~ if the little sister doesn't listen in the future, I'll help you teach her. I'll scare her with these and tell her that if she doesn't listen, I'll cut off her fingers one by one~"
In fact, the "underlying logic" is very simple, and saying this is a bit "shameless" - because I was the only male in that evening's gathering, the little girl initially wanted to seek attention from me the most (judging from her relationship with her mother, it is reasonable to speculate that her relationship with her father is better, but her father's attention has been decreasing recently and shifting to her younger sister). After being ignored by me (I really dislike people with strong feminine traits, sorry), her desire for attention spread to everyone else. And is her conversation with her sister genuine? I can't say for sure, but the knife hidden in her words may become a sharp blade as she grows up.
Another scene was recorded in my circle of friends a few months ago while having a meal.
During the meal, I observed a typical family with a second child who was a boy. The couple was accompanied by the husband's mother and their two siblings.
Sister Brother
———Milk
Father Mother
The older sister was probably around 5 or 6 years old, and the younger brother was 3 or 4 years old. The older sister had several expressions that were very similar to the look my dog gives when waiting for us to give her food after receiving a command - her black pupils swirling inside her white irises, observing the adults with a sidelong glance. Especially when the grandmother returned to her seat, the little girl kept looking at her with an expressionless sideways glance, like a guilty puppy. The grandmother didn't pay much attention to the girl and focused on the younger brother the whole time.
During this time, the little girl tried to "enforce the law" on her younger brother by holding a piece of seaweed in her mouth. When the younger brother saw the half piece of seaweed in his sister's mouth, he reached out and violently snatched it away. The older sister complained to her father. Just as the father was about to educate the younger brother, the grandmother interrupted with magic words: "Oh, if he wants to eat it, let him eat it."
The older sister wanted to drink her brother's milk tea. As soon as she took it, the younger brother anxiously pushed away the spoon that the grandmother was feeding him with. The grandmother immediately scolded the older sister, "Let her eat properly and don't disturb him."
During the meal, the older sister asked her mother to take out a small round mirror. She placed it in front of herself and watched herself eat ramen from various angles in the mirror. The father looked at his phone, the mother also looked at her phone, and the grandmother only cared about the younger brother. Every action of the older sister conveyed a single message at all times: "Look at me, look at me, look at me, look at me..."
I won't draw any conclusions or make any deductions here, so as not to "add drama" again~