Behind all their personal vanity, women themselves always have

The words of Friedrich Nietzsche, “Behind all their personal vanity, women themselves always have an impersonal contempt for woman,” fall like a riddle, sharp and unsettling. In them he does not speak of hatred born of passion, but of a subtle, hidden current—how society has trained women to doubt one another, to measure themselves against each other, and to reflect the contempt that has long been cast upon them. What appears as vanity—care for beauty, the striving for admiration—he sees as a mask that conceals an inherited self-distrust.

For centuries, women were told their worth lay not in their minds, but in their appearance. They were praised when they pleased and scorned when they faltered. In such a world, rivalry became natural, and comparison inevitable. Thus, the contempt for woman was not a hatred invented by women themselves, but the echo of a voice imposed upon them by men, by culture, by law. Nietzsche, though often harsh, unveils this paradox: that women’s vanity may spring not from pride, but from insecurity, born of a society that forced them to see one another as competitors for approval.

History gives us many examples. In the royal courts of Europe, queens and ladies-in-waiting adorned themselves with jewels and silks, vying for the gaze of the king or noblemen. Yet beneath the glitter lay suspicion and rivalry, each woman subtly diminished by the need to outshine her sisters. One recalls Marie Antoinette, who, though radiant in beauty and charm, was relentlessly judged and ridiculed, not only by men but by other women who mirrored the scorn taught to them by a patriarchal society. Her fall shows how contempt for woman often became a weapon wielded against themselves.

Nietzsche’s words also echo in the salons of literature. Virginia Woolf, centuries later, remarked that women had too long been mirrors, reflecting men at twice their size. But she too observed that women, having been denied true selfhood, often turned against one another, repeating the world’s contempt instead of breaking it. The struggle for self-belief became not only against men but against the silent rivalries among women themselves.

So let this truth be passed to future generations: the chains of vanity and contempt are not natural, but learned. If women have turned against women, it is because they were trained to do so by a society that feared their unity. The task of the future is to dissolve this inherited scorn, to replace rivalry with solidarity, and to see in each woman not a rival but a sister. For when women cease to echo the world’s contempt, they will speak instead with one voice of power, and that voice will shake the very foundations of the earth.