There’s this saying that’s been around forever: “If you don’t see it, how do you know you can be it?” If your example of “right” was always male, do you think it would occur to you naturally that you as a woman have the authority to be whoever and whatever you want to be? Do you think you’d easily come to believe that you have the right and the power and the might to pursue your own dreams just for yourself? Or, do you think it’s possible that you might seek permission or even approval from people other than yourself because that was your normal?
I was raised with a voice of authority that was male. My daddy is a strong and very forceful personality, and he demanded total obedience. I learned to live in hope of his approval and terrified of his displeasure. Then I met my husband when I was nineteen years old, and though he is a very different kind of man, I can recognize in retrospect that I transferred my feelings about my father to my husband. I was utterly codependent. I lived every day to please him and make him happy, and if he was unhappy—even if it wasn’t about me—it was crippling. I would drown in anxiety until I could do something or say something to change his mood.
I remember about seven years ago he’d had a bad day at work and he was really frustrated when he got home. I went immediately into “fix it” mode. I was like, “Can I make you a drink? Are you hungry? You want to watch a movie? You want to have sex?” and he looked at me very firmly but very kindly and said, “Rachel, I’m in a bad mood, and I’ll get over it. It’s okay if I’m upset. You don’t have to make it better. It’s not your job to make sure I’m happy.”
Holy crap, you guys. It was a freaking epiphany! It really never occurred to me that I should just let him process his feelings and it wasn’t my job to fix them. I had been raised in a house where we did everything possible to keep Daddy happy, and I didn’t know there was any other way to be.
Consequently, when I began to understand that the entire purpose for my life wasn’t to please someone else, I began to consider things I hadn’t before. Like, what if I could make decisions for myself? What if I stopped making every choice in my life about what would please others most? What if sometimes I just did what I wanted to do? What if I stopped asking permission?
I didn’t even realize I was doing it back then, but for the first probably ten years of my marriage I had asked Dave’s permission to do everything. Not because he told me to, but because that’s what I thought was normal and I brought it into our marriage with me.
“Do you care if I go to the grocery store?”
“Do you mind if I have dinner with Mandy on Thursday night?”
“Hey, is it cool if I eat the last of the Girl Scout cookies?”
I did this years before we had children, so this wasn’t even like a “Hey, I want to do this activity, and I’m going to need you to cover childcare” sort of thing. This was me seriously needing his sanction to do anything in my life, because I didn’t want my desires to inconvenience him in any way.
I look back on those years, and I thank God that I married a good man. It would have been so easy for him to take advantage of me or abuse the power he had over me if he’d been inclined to.
Friends, if you’re reading this, I’m going to assume you’re a grown-up woman. Grown-up women don’t ask permission. There is absolutely a way to be your own person while also being part of a great relationship with someone else. It is absolutely possible to manage your priorities, your responsibilities, and your personal desires in a way that stays true to you and the people you love.
It happens when you stop asking permission to be yourself.
It happens when you stop caring more about what they think of your dream than what you think of your dream.
It happens when you put more value into your self-care than you put into whether they’ll be inconvenienced by it.
You’re allowed to want to be your best self, to pursue your dream, even if they don’t understand it. You’re allowed to push for something more, even if they don’t like it. You’re allowed to take time away from your kids, even if it’s an inconvenience to the person who has to watch them. You’re allowed to do something, even if it makes your partner uncomfortable. You’re allowed to tell people who you are and what you need instead of first asking if they’re all right with it. You’re allowed to simply exist without permissions or opinions or qualifiers.
I’m trying to recall when I first heard the term girl boss.
Certainly it reached the heights of popularity when Sophia Amoruso published her book. At the time, I lined up to buy it like every other self-respecting, self-taught female entrepreneur. Reading her story was inspiring and motivational, and I honestly didn’t give much thought to the title because I was so fired up to read what was inside.
But then I started to see the term (and subsequent offshoots) everywhere . . . #GirlBoss #BossBabe #EntrepreneHER. Women of every age and background picked up the moniker and ran with it. It became a popular trend on social media that still hasn’t died down years later. It’s part of the vernacular now. It’s tossed around at conferences and has become a title that young women in entrepreneurial studies programs aspire to.
And it makes my blood boil.
I want to stand on a soapbox and rant about this particular topic and how it plays into the male voice of authority, but instead I’ll ask a question. Do you know what it means to qualify something? I ask, because when I was younger, I don’t think I would have stopped to consider the pet name of “girl boss” for women like me. I would never have questioned what a hashtag might say about women in business in general. When I bring up the act of qualifying something in panel discussions at one conference after another, only a handful of people respond saying they do know about it. And so I read the definition aloud:
qual·i·fy1
kw?l’?-fī’
verb
1. To modify, limit, or restrict, as by listing exceptions or reservations
2. To make less harsh or severe; moderate
Before coming to run my company, my husband was a high-level executive at one of the largest media companies on the planet. He led a worldwide team of more people than I can keep track of. He worked his way up from an assistant with drive and determination. He’s also never—not one single time—had someone give him a label for the work he does based on his gender.
To qualify the term boss by adding girl or babe or honey or pink or whatever other ridiculous, antiquated gender-role assignment the media thinks is cute this month, is at the least disrespectful and at the worst damaging to the way young women view themselves and to our fight for equality in the business world. And the worst part is, women are the ones who are perpetrating this! Women are the ones who are stamping this label on stationery and T-shirts and pinnable quotes, all under the guise that it’s helpful and inspiring to a younger generation.
On some level, they’re right: owning or running a company or a team is inspiring to a younger generation. But if our daughters have the courage and grit to pick up that baton, don’t belittle their efforts by saying it’s pretty good for a girl. We don’t call them “girl doctors” or “girl lawyers” or “girl nominees for president of the United States of America.” Those positions were hard-fought to achieve, and they demand respect. So does this.
Being a boss has been one of the greatest privileges and challenges of my life. Being a boss takes guts and tenacity. Being a boss takes hustle and strength. Getting to the level of boss takes hard work—oftentimes harder than it takes for our male counterparts because, in many industries, we’re fighting our way into a boys’ club. You might call that kind of person a rebel, a rogue, a leader, but there’s nothing gender specific about it.
I bring it up now because I want to remind you that you do not need anyone’s permission to be yourself, and you also don’t need to conform and twist and rebrand your goal to make it more palatable for them. You don’t need to present yourself in a certain light to be loved and accepted. The people who deserve to be in your life will care about who you—the real you—actually are, even if it takes some getting used to. Even if you’re different from every other woman they know. Even if you’re different from the woman they fell in love with.
Be the kind of woman you want to be.