Another week, another campaign launched for armchair activists to get their teeth into. It’s the impetus some people seem to need to get up and out, like watching an episode of Oprah or listening to ‘Sisters are doin’ it for themselves’ while in the shower. This time, the champions are Facebook chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg and American Girl Scouts chief Maria Chavez, who have called for an end to the use of the word ‘bossy’.
‘When a little boy asserts himself, he's called a “leader.” Yet when a little girl does the same, she risks being branded “bossy”’, the Ban Bossy website explains. The campaign pledges to help eradicate the negativity surrounding female leadership. In reality, the ‘bossy’ part seems more of a media tactic than a vitriolic attack on linguistics. It would be a difficult thing to enforce, unless they’re planning on cutting out tongues. The rest of the site is mostly advice on how to bring out the leadership skills in girls and, if anything, seems to be a clarion call for the Girl Scouts, which the melee over ‘bossy’ has helped disguise.
But their remarks have kicked off a storm. Sara Mills, research professor in linguistics at Sheffield Hallam University, told BBC News: ‘It’s impossible to ban a word but if people are replacing it with words like “confidence” or “assertiveness”, we would all be in a much better place.’ Is sighing when you read the news a sign that you are getting old? Yes, words can be very important in communicating and upholding the culture of the times, but this constant assertion of how confident people are is exhausting. People are still going to bitch by the kettle, whether they can say bossy or not. I give it a year of #banbossy before assertive has morphed into meaning aggressive and confident means being a c***.
Besides bossiness isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Think of the perks.
My friend Holly is about as bossy as it gets and thank goodness she is, otherwise we’d never get anything done. Just this morning I got an email detailing the costs of another friend’s hen do. It was broken down into instalments on a spreadsheet, with those I’d paid crossed off. It’s more than I hoped to pay but if it was left up to me, I’d probably end up spending double that on the day on missed trains and overpriced drinks.
Holly coordinates a lot of what I do, which is a great help. And I still have the power of free will, the power to say no - that’s what people seem to forget. She’ll say, ‘Let’s go to this burger place for dinner’, to which I’ll respond, ‘No, I don’t feel like a burger. Can’t we eat something leafy.' She’ll find an alternative and if I continue to whine, she’ll say, ‘Shut up, we’re eating here’. Thank goodness for that, too. I don’t really want to make the decision, I just want to feel that I have a say. A female boss who makes unreasonable demands without room for compromise isn’t bossy, she’s a bellend.
While Holly seems to lack the capacity to bring order to her own life – like many ‘bossy’ people – she is fantastic at organising the rest of us, her hapless crew. Coming up with ideas is one thing but focusing on one and bringing it to fruition is quite another, a skill that Holly has in droves. She has excellent managerial skills. To a friend trying to lose weight, she’ll say a grab bag of crisps is a bad idea. She buys the tickets for every event, every holiday. When we lived together, she sorted the bills. There’s never any bickering about money as Holly seems to have our collective finances under careful scrutiny. Not sure if I should be more worried about that.
It’s true, sometimes she’ll snap when people fall out of line with her robotic plans. But that’s a small price to pay for the chance to offload administrative tasks, and sometimes responsibility, onto her. Bossiness is a trait with it up sides and downs, but it’s not something to tackle. What everyone seems to recognise – except people starting dubious Scout campaigns – is that it’s the acceptance of women in leadership roles that needs to be worked on. The more women in power, the less affronted dim-witted employees will feel at the prospect of a female boss and the less some bosses – male or female – will feel the need to assert their power heavy-handedly.
Follow Amelia on Twitter @ameliaephillips
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.