Last night, FX unveiled Ryan Murphy’s latest masterwork: Feud: Bette and Joan, the new miniseries about Bette Davis and Joan Crawford battling it out on the set of their 1962 movie What Ever Happened to Baby Jane. Crawford and Davis were among the first to perfect the celebrity art of being larger-than-life, and the stories of their legendary backstage drama make What Ever Happened to Baby Jane—already a campy, over-the-top delight—even more fun to watch. But what is it about girl drama that makes our ears perk up?

Movies and TV shows about female friendship are more popular than ever—but for every Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, there’s a Mean Girls or a Heathers. Tabloids with star-studded catfights splashed across their covers continue to do gangbusters. Heck, even the wholesome Archie comics (not to mention their recent CW spinoff Riverdale) have wrung a good 70 years’ worth of stories out of the Betty-Veronica rivalry. Let’s face it: women have been enshrined in pop culture as catty and competitive. Even recent phenomena that seem to counter this notion—like newly-awakened feminist Taylor Swift’s #squadgoals—are quickly overshadowed by stories that support the classic narrative of female rivalry (um, “Bad Blood” much?). It’s like the patriarchy wants to make sure we’re so busy going for each other’s throats that we don’t notice the guys making off with all the spoils.

So in that sense it comes as no surprise that we’d rather watch a juicy miniseries about Betty Davis and Joan Crawford duking it out than, oh, a feel-good Hallmark movie Julie Andrews’ friendship with Carol Burnett. (And, in fairness, Davis and Crawford weren’t exactly BFFs beforehand.) But our lust for lady-drama doesn’t accurately represent the truth about how women relate to one another.

It is true that women typically compete with each other by way of “indirect aggression”—but isn’t that to be expected in a society where openly competitive women are stigmatized? Research has shown that, at least in Western countries, men are actually more competitive than women—we just don’t notice because overt male competition is normalized. And any girl could tell you that her friendships with other women are often the healthiest, most significant relationships in her life.

Thankfully, it does seem like the tide is turning. Most modern chronicles of female rivalry actually hint at constructive outcomes—if these grand dames weren’t around to challenge each other, suggest Feud and the new Broadway musical War Paint, would they have risen to such great heights on their own? And 2016 was a banner year for female friendships on celluloid, so with any luck that trend will continue into 2017.

So, by all means, immerse yourself in the campy histrionics of Feud: Bette and Joan (or, even better, immerse yourself in the real thing—What Ever Happened To Baby Jane is available on iTunes). But do yourself a favor and chase it with a story about what sisterhood really looks like.