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How many of us live in fear of other people's criticism, judgment, or online attacks? Why is it so harmful to perpetuate the narrative of
the 'nice woman'? It seems that anything can be forgiven these days, except the lethal offense of someone from your past claiming that you were not nice, even one time, a decade ago. You fired someone, so you became toxic. You broke up with an abusive guy, so you're problematic. You let someone know they didn't do their job correctly (that you paid them for), so you're difficult. Almost anything can be forgiven, except a woman accused of not being nice. As I type it, it seems so ludicrous and evident. Of course, we've all read the studies on women who avoid conflict and keep their feelings inside, having a much higher cancer and disease rate than those who speak up and advocate for themselves, but we still don't really allow it in society, do we? Our Addiction to Attacking Women Expecting perfection is the new way we repackage hating women. Our addiction to attacking women online, having unrealistic standards, and finding anything we can to discredit them reveals our rage addiction, and our commitment to suppressing women, and it is so destructive and dangerous. People apologize, grow, and change. Let them. Why We Hide We hide from being misunderstood, criticized, attacked online, and, most of all, blamed for what happens to us. The shame and the fear make us think our invisibility will protect us. At some point, we have to come to terms with how much we savor with delicious delight the takedown and destruction of women, especially women we deem more successful and more attractive than ourselves. |
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You're Going to Have a Bad Day Perfectionism is the new tool that we use to destroy a woman's credibility, brand, company, and livelihood. You don't get a bad day, you don't even get a healthy reaction to a bad situation, do you? Do we really need an example? Let's look at social media. Any female celebrity who has three people that she's worked with over 15 years say that she wasn't always very nice, that she was demanding, too direct, and maybe she was rude in an interview where someone overstepped—that's it, that's enough to take her down, ruin her career and her name. Oh, and just read the comment section. The way people drool and invest their energy in the takedown, the way they love to hate women they've never even met, it's enough to break your heart. All for the unforgivable offense of not being perfectly nice all the time to every single person. No questions asked. That's why you should never build your brand on being nice. Build it on being honest, giving respectful, direct feedback, but it's an unwinnable bet to think that no one from your past won't have an issue with you. Why Does This Affect You? It keeps us playing small. It keeps us scared. It makes us overcautious. And it keeps us quiet. I just don't see many male CEOs losing their companies because five employees said they were tough, rude, demanding, or that the environment wasn't a sanctuary to work in. If we were honest, most of us would say it's pretty terrifying. The idea of being destroyed online based on a few opinions about our behavior over the last 30 years has kept me awake at night. The Accusation Is Enough "Oh, I heard that she…" It's the most dangerous weaponized sentence we use against each other. Someone once directly asked me about a situation, which I appreciated. I told them exactly what happened and followed up with "If you ever hear anything spicy about me, the person did something extremely unsavory." And I always have receipts and an email chain. The truth is that if anyone were to dig around and go through our workplace contacts over the last three decades, talk to all of our neighbors, other parents, and down the long list of our lives, would it be difficult to find a handful of people who didn't like us? So why are we so intolerant of other people online and so eager to always believe the worst about other women? Do we believe the worst in ourselves?
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Have we internalized this self-hatred so much that now we've weaponized it against other women? Nothing is more dangerous and fatal than silenced women. People get away with too much when we're afraid to say, "This doesn't feel OK," "This job wasn't done correctly," "We need to improve this," or "You didn't follow my instructions." I learned that the second you stop being everyone's yes person, oh, the tides change. Needing to be liked is the best way to abandon yourself.
May we be real, authentic, fallible, messy, and imperfect.
May we allow it in ourselves and others. May we have a return of the wild women, feral even, fearless, bold, with big hearts and a small tolerance for bullsh*t. May we hold each other with strength, a sacred sisterhood, mixing accountability with compassion and softness. With Love, Maranda If you'd like to sign up for a print subscription or order a single copy of our upcoming late summer issue, we'll have a lot of support, encouragement, and growth ideas. |
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