The third season of HBO’s “The White Lotus” includes a plot line centered on a real pressure cooker of a situation: the costly, weeklong girls’ trip that could very easily make or break a friendship.
Three of the characters who’ve checked into the 5-star Thai resort on Mike White’s soapy vacation drama are Laurie (Carrie Coon), Jaclyn (Michelle Monaghan) and Kate (Leslie Bibb), childhood best friends looking to get close again.
In the first aired episodes ― there have been two so far ― Jaclyn, a well-known television actress, and Kate, a socialite housewife from Austin, spend most of the time engaged in a game of one-upmanship and beauty treatment comparisons: “You look so great.” “No, you look so great!” they tell each other, leaving poor Laurie, a recently divorced lawyer, awkwardly out of the conversation.
When Jaclyn and Kate do focus on Laurie, it’s to talk behind her back. In Episode 2, Laurie goes to bed and the other two women stay up and discuss everything that’s gone wrong in Laurie’s life as of late: the palimony she has to pay her ex, her increasingly troubled teen daughter, her stalled-out job at a New York City law firm she’s been working at forever.
“The world’s brutal,” Jaclyn says of Laurie’s fate at midlife, swishing her glass of wine around for effect, just like a good “Real Housewives” cast member would do.
“No wonder she looks defeated…” Kate says with widened eyes.
“I thought you said she looked great,” Jaclyn says, all mock-surprise but loving it.
“Well… she does,” Kate says. “But she also looks tired. Don’t you think?”
“Might be the drinking,” Jaclyn says, which Kate agrees with, observing that Laurie drank a whole bottle that night alone.
Before it gets too vicious, Kate switches the vibe: “I just love her so much,” she says with concern.
“I do, too,” Jaclyn says. “I just worry about her.”
Coming from two supposed friends, it’s truly unsparing stuff. The scene is also a masterclass in something that’s far too common in women’s friendships: mean-girl gossip masked as concern.
The conversation has a veneer of caring: Jaclyn and Kate are just worried about their friend, that’s why they’re talking so much shit! (Though she’s in the dark about this exchange, Laurie’s not entirely innocent on the trip, either. In a later scene, she connects with Kate and is all too giddy to bring up all the work Jaclyn’s had done on her face: “Did she sandblast her face or something? It’s very waxy.”)
In an interview with Glamour, Coon delved into what she thinks of these exquisitely catty moments.
“It’s like you throw the third one under the bus in order to forge a connection with the person who’s in front of you and connect under the auspices of, ‘I’m very concerned about our friend and I care about our friend,’” she told the magazine.
“Both things can be true, but they’re also being really cruel and mean and judgmental,” she said. “But ultimately, you wouldn’t have to have those conversations if everybody was showing up with everything they were holding.”
Jennifer Chappell Marsh, a marriage and family therapist in San Diego, and is watching the show, said she sees this mean-girl dynamic play out all the time in friendships ― not to mention on countless high-drama “Real Housewives” trips.
“It gives people a way to be judgmental while still feeling like they’re being kind. It’s a way to bond, process our own feelings, and sometimes even reassure ourselves about our own choices,” she told HuffPost.
Friendships can be both a safe space and a source of tension, she added, and those tensions can easily crop up on vacation, when you’re in close quarters in a foreign land and up-close-and-personal with all your friends’ flaws.
“We care about our friends, but we also can’t help but compare, analyze and sometimes judge — often without realizing it,” Marsh said.
More often than when we gossip like this, we’re revealing more about ourselves than the other person, said Cat Hoggard Wagley, a mental health counselor who makes TikToks exploring the ways psychology topics relate to pop culture.
“I always say that we see each other as a mirror to the self,” she told HuffPost. “If I talk about my weight, then you’re going to think about your body. If I comment on someone else’s weight, then I’m really highlighting an insecurity of my own.”
When Hoggard Wagley watches ― or hears about this sort of feigned concern among friends ― she wonders, “What is this telling us about the person speaking?”
The counselor admits she’s veered into gossip-as-concern territory herself, once venting about a good friend to an acquaintance, only to realize it was kind of inappropriate and stemming from her own insecurity about the friendship being on shaky ground.
“I reached out later to the friend, admitting to what I did before it got to them through another channel,” she said. “By apologizing and owning up to that insecurity, it repaired our friendship and mended the bridge, something I was avoiding doing through gossip.”
In the case of “The White Lotus,” the women are clearly insecure about aging, and if Hoggard Wagley had to guess, she’d say they’re also insecure about their status in the group: Am I truly liked? Do we still have anything in common? What do my friends think of the path my life has taken? What secret judgments are they harboring?
“To cope with their insecurity, they project a dislike onto someone else,” the therapist said. “If I believe I will be talked about when I walk away, then I will talk about them when they walk away, and it’s a constant cycle of insecurity, envy, and disingenuous connection.”
So how do you guard against gossip as concern in your own relationships? If the conversation is making you feel better about your own life choices, it’s probably not genuine concern, Marsh said.
“When I work with clients on friendships, I often encourage them to pause and ask, what’s my intention here? If it’s genuine concern, there’s usually a way to express it directly in a way that strengthens the friendship instead of creating distance,” she said.
Real concern usually involves some action, too, Hoggard Wagley said.
“There’s a difference between ‘she’s looking so tired and drinking so much, but God, she has been working a lot lately’ and ‘hey I noticed lately that she has maybe been overwhelmed, would you like to help me check in on her?’” the counselor said.
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Marsh agrees. “If it’s just the two of you rehashing the same observations, it’s probably just using the topic for entertainment purposes, like on ‘White Lotus.’”