Remind me to invite Leighton over when "Baby Mama" comes out on DVD.

Deal. As long as you remind me to invite Leighton over whenever I see her.

"I was just reading something about, like, how Natalie Portman and Scarlett Johansson didn't get along [on the set of "The Other Boleyn Girl"]," says Leighton. "Why don't they say that George Clooney and Brad Pitt don't get along? It's always the girls."

Because it wasn't true?

Oh, wait, it's Broadsheet. Here, truth is not a defense against failure to commit libel.

Congratulations, Annsley. You've chosen to board the dumbest bus in the entire short-bus fleet that is Salon.

Novelists and screenwriters know that conflict sells. Conflict is interesting. Why is this news? Why is the focus suddenly about women? There are tons of movies and stories about men in conflict. Why not women? In real life, things are a lot more nuanced.

I have at times wondered how it is that girls, especially pre-college girls, tend to pick each other apart with ferocity, but if there's anything to that, and I'm not sure there is, it's something people grow out of.

My girlfirends (this usage meaning "friends that are female") are not in anyway handicapped at their ability to be loving, sincere, devoted friends. No pettiness. No drama. Just solid friends.

And it's got nothing to do with the second X chromosome they have. They're just good people.

Why can't some women simply dislike one another without it becoming a trend? Men do it all the time. The problem isn't with women's friendships - it's with the media-industrial complex's neverending need to create fake trends so that the the women who write for women's magazines and gossip rags can keep plying their "trade." Women's mags create and maintain a market for fake "trends" that make sensible people roll their eyes in disgust. I'm all for women's liberation - from the godawful women's magazine industry that enslaves so many of their minds.

Most of these so called "women" are just girls. They will grow out of it, hopefully. Now, I'm in my 30s, I do have stronger relationships with my female friends.

They would contrive conflict to extend their fame.

However, they might not be skilled in friendship, since their lives have been spent on being famous, rather than spent on developing friendship skills.

In summation, I suspect they're either fake-fighters-for-more-fame or unskilled friends or both.

Or D: if it bleeds, it leads, as Ms. Chapman noted.

I think some people, girls and boys, will always be guilty of being catty or nasty toward other people. But no one is forcing anyone to remain in "friendships" with these people. If you're in a friendship that makes you feel crappy, get out of it.

I agree with a previous commenter that the reason we read about all of these female celebrity tiffs is because conflict sells...that's nothing new. However, I'm not sure that we can just brush off young girl bitchiness as something they'll grow out of it. I know 30 and 40 year old women who act like they're still in high school. The reason...they never really learned how to control their jealousy.

In my opinion, we're genetically hard-wired to identify potential threats to our family, so jealousy doesn't necessarily have to be a bad thing - it can be a matter of survival. But when it turns into being spiteful and bitchy for no reason (usually aimed at our girlfriends), it needs to be addressed. And not until adult women learn how to be a good friend will our daughters follow suit.

Just my opinion. I wrote an article entitled, "Cool Broads aren't Bitches" on my blog. Let me know what you think.

xoxo tcb

Is there not a point when you're typing this shite where you start hating yourself? Where you start thinking you could have gone and worked for TMZ instead?

OMG, Paris doesn't like Nicole! Thanks, Salon, for your profound feminist insight.

I've never met a man who had a friend whom he genuinely didn't like, yet I know dozens of women who have other female friends which they find abusive, opportunistic, deplorable, aggravating, boring, and just plain don't find pleasurable to relate to.

I've spent countless hours as a sounding-board for these feelings; complaining, bitching, and deriding. After they're all done getting it all out I always ask, "Why are you friends with that person, if they're so horrible and unenjoyable?"

The responses range from, "I feel obligated..." to "Oh, I know it sounds bad, but..." In either case the "friendship" just keeps on trucking, and invariably I can look forward to another earful of the same complaints about the same friend a few days down the road.

It's really quite the tragic comedy as an impartial observer.

Most often these "friends" seem to be someone with whom they have to spend a lot of close-proximity time with; ie. co-workers, roommates, friends of friends, etc.

I have no idea what compels these women to keep company they can hardly tolerate to be around, but I've started to assume one or more of the following:

1) They confuse forced time together by circumstance as a signal for companionship (work, etc).

2) They are masters of exaggeration, but without the realization they're exaggerating, so they internalize feelings that they're simply manufacturing.

3) They have no idea what friends are.

Miss Caroline Bingley, exhibit A. How nice to meet you, Becky Sharp! And my favorite deconstruction of bitchy friendship, Heathers: "I don't really like my friends...they're people I work with, and our job is being popular."

Why don't they say that George Clooney and Brad Pitt don't get along?

Maybe guys are reconciliators who seek out agreement and girls are selfish rats who seek and nurture conflict?

No wonder women like Norah Vincent say that if they were a guy, they would NEVER date women, much less marry them.

I don't think women are bad at friendship. I do think US women are increasingly unskilled at the social niceties that allow friendships to flower -- but we're not worse at it than American men. And I think the women you cite are a cautionary tale... aspire to a glamorous, ritzy, action-packed life in front of the cameras and you'll miss out on sociable, everyday friendships.