As anyone who pays attention to the news or has any feelings about feminism will know, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg has launched a campaign against the commonplace use of the word “bossy.” According to Sandberg and the women involved in her campaign — Beyoncé, Jennifer Garner, Diane von Furstenberg and Condoleezza Rice to name a few — society needs to “recognize the many ways we systematically discourage leadership in girls from a young age.” The “Ban Bossy” campaign leaders advise that “The next time you have the urge to call your little girl bossy? Take a deep breath and praise her leadership skills instead.”
It seems like these women behind the campaign have good intentions, doesn’t it? After all, bullying is a proven source of low self-esteem that can lead to any number of issues later in a child’s life. However, as it was put by Harold Koplewicz, head of the nonprofit Child Mind Institute: “Bossy girls, as my 13-year-old daughter describes them, are closer to being bullies than they are leaders. And we know that bullies fundamentally feel insecure, hate themselves for it and assert themselves over other insecure people as a way of garnering a sense of control and dominance.”
Will encouraging the disuse of words like “bossy” aid these girls in the pursuit of becoming leaders? No, because these bullies are called bossy for their negative behavior, not because they’re actually burgeoning leaders who are being suppressed. Banning the word bossy won’t cause them to change their psychologically-rooted behavior and reveal aspirations to become CEOs or a modern-day Margaret Thatcher.
But what about the other girls who aren’t bullies and who are still being called bossy? Aren’t they deterred from pursuing leadership roles? According to Koplewicz, “At the moment there is no direct research that categorizes the word bossy as dangerous.”
If one disconnects from the campaign’s touchy feminist rhetoric and considers the matter logically, it can be predicted that there never will be any research to conclusively categorize the word bossy as threatening. The whole matter boils down to this: Bossiness is a behavioral flaw, not suppressed leadership qualities; being called bossy is a form of criticism, and criticism is not innately evil.
Criticism serves a positive purpose. True, it can be taken too far and become malicious. Even in those instances, however, if an individual is taught to process and handle criticism correctly, it can still achieve its proper end. This means that girls cannot be taught to duck for cover with tears in their eyes when judgment, true or false, is shot their way. To prepare them that way is to do girls a disservice because life is not a cakewalk, and no one, male or female, becomes a leader on any scale by hiding behind a list of banned words.
Reporter Dana Loesch of TheBlaze news network is among those who understand the proper solution to the problem. “How about teaching girls not to let the perception of others define them? How about you teach girls strength from overcoming something, not running to Uncle Sam to ban what you dislike? How about you teach girls to get tough, Sheryl Sandberg, because no girl-woman is going to take over a board room if an innocuous adjective hurts her little feelings?”
If girls are taught along the lines of Loesch’s advice instead of feeling victimized when they are called things like bossy, then they can truly become leaders. They will self-reflect when they’re criticized and have the sensibility to determine whether they will modify their behavior because there was truth to the criticism or to be strong and let the criticism roll off their backs.
Making someone into a victim or making someone believe they’re a victim naturally makes them a follower. Leaders are who they are because they find strength internally. That’s a trait that can be developed — but not by hiding behind the red tape of political correctness. Not if girls only crawl into the open when words like “bossy” and “stubborn” and “pushy” aren’t speeding like bullets through the air.
I’ve been called “bossy” and “stubborn” and “pushy.” Who hasn’t? Girls and boys criticize each other every day — and sometimes, the criticisms are true. Nearly if not all kids go through some kind of snotty phase. Everyone knows that kids are brutal to one another and to everyone else around them. If we can’t pick ourselves back up after we fall down, then who are we?
Theresa Cooley ([email protected]) is a sophomore majoring in English.
