Story time! By the time I was in 5th grade, I had grown my hair to be very long, all the way to my hips. It was my mom that made me grow my hair that long. Up until that time, I never really cared about my hair or my looks so I never gave it much thought. None of my friends ever commented about it in any way. Then I got to middle school. We all hit puberty. Suddenly, my friends were telling me that my hair was too long and that I would look better with shorter hair. I distinctly remember that one of the girls who would tell me this had long hair herself, mine just happened to be longer. One day in 7th grade, as I was walking out of the school cafeteria after lunch, a girl tapped me on my shoulder and asked “is that your hair?” as she pointed towards the floor. I was confused and didn’t know what she meant until I looked down and saw a lock of hair of about 3-4 inches just lying there. I asked her, “Whose hair is that?” and she said, “Yours.” I looked at my hair that was in a braid, and sure enough, a chunk was cut and missing. I was shocked until I heard a laugh behind me. It was one of my “friends”, she was laughing out loud with a pair of scissors in her hand. She thought it was hilarious. Of course, I was very hurt. The ends of my hair were uneven for months (I didn’t want to cut it so I just waited until it grew back). Anyways, girls commenting about how much better I’d look with shorter hair continued throughout my entire adolescence. Female intrasexual competition is 100% real, it starts out very young, and it is vicious. A lot of times women don’t even realize that they’re doing it. The jealousy and desire to bring a woman down in order to bring themselves up comes naturally for many. Any woman that isn’t being dishonest and that grew up with women will confirm that. You don’t really need a study to know this, but in this case this study is based on reality.