My must read of the day is "Don’t Ban ‘Bossy,'" by Margaret Talbot, in the New Yorker:
Fresh off the success of having coined a new term—"lean in"—Sheryl Sandberg is trying to flush an old one down the drain. Together with Condoleezza Rice, Beyoncé, Jennifer Garner, and the Girl Scouts, Sandberg has launched a campaign to ban the word "bossy." […]
Sandberg et al. do have a point. Think back on your own experience of deploying that word, and you’re likely to conclude that you have attached it more often to girls and women. Is that sexist? Probably. Does it mean that we should ban the word? No.
For one thing, "bossy" is a useful descriptive word that invokes a particular kind of behavior. It’s not actually a synonym, derogatory or otherwise, for leadership or authoritativeness, nor necessarily a criticism of women who embody those qualities. What it usually connotes is someone who is not in fact your boss, or a boss at all, telling you what to do. […]
As Katy Waldman points out on Slate this week, though, when you realize that a word like "bossy" (or "strident," or "shrill") might be used to punish women for simply speaking up, you have choices other than to ban it. Banning is really only for words that solely degrade or demean, and even then you want to proceed with caution because you’re depleting the expressive richness of the language.
I saw this "ban bossy" stuff in a Wall Street Journal article last week. I thought it was moronic, and I largely ignored it because it was just one article. Turns out this is actually a serious thing. I know this because they have a website, a one-minute, seven seconds video on YouTube (complete with a motivating soundtrack), and Beyoncé.
They’ve clearly put a lot of effort into the campaign, and it’s kind of depressing.
You’re not empowering people by trying to ban a word—it’s just a word. Yes, they can be hurtful and do matter, but a single word is not inhibiting success at large. Banning it won’t resolve any of the issues they outline.
Encouraging girls to lead is an important thing. Banning bossy is not.
Talbot compares the word to "nerd." It was once, and still is, a word used to tease and mock people, but somewhere along the way people realized being nerdy and smart is awesome. Being intelligent is a coveted attribute and rightly so because nerdy people are typically successful people.
The characteristics of a bossy person are actually a very good thing. In a nutshell, bossy people get shit done. We should be emphasizing taking charge and look at bossy as possessing long-term attributes that are positive. And more importantly, we should find better things to do than wring our hands over the injustice of such a trivial adjective.