Intro: Martha Stewart, Kimora Lee Simmons, & Anna Wintour are women who demand the best, are the best and have been affectionally described by past staff members as bitches. It is a term that, when used, can turn industries, people, and opportunities against you because the worst thing you can be as a woman is unwilling to march by anyone’s rules but your own.
Women who are ungovernable win and simultaneously always find themselves punished by society in slight and obvert ways. The slights look like your colleagues forgetting to invite you into meetings that will be a platform for you to shine. It looks like them interpreting your direct approach as aggressive or unprofessional. The obvious ways are outright violence, and as a woman, you walk this imaginary tightrope where you balance appeasing those who are brutal while listening to the inner voice that says do what you want. But being a bitch means leaning into that inner voice and letting things be what they are.
When you embrace being a bitch, you accept yourself entirely. You don’t squash the urge to say no for fear of being mean. You don’t eliminate the need for confrontation because you understand that you will wrestle with it for days and sometimes years if you don't confront it now. To be a bitch, means you open the door and let everything out instead of closing it and stuffing everything down to the pits of your stomach until one day your burst or pop up with an autoimmune disease.
When I was in my 20s, after every moment where I asserted myself was messy, direct, mean, and uncompromising, I would look to my friends and ask, “Am I tripping?” But now that I am in my 30s, I realize the question doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter if someone thinks I am “tripping?” It doesn’t matter if someone considers me mean. What matters is what I feel, and If I don’t like it, I don’t like it; if I do, I do, which is enough for me.
Being a bitch is being whole, whole in the sense that you don’t need affirmation or to be filled by others, and you mean it. You got here because you governed yourself and established that you are the mayor, city council member, president, and anything you say goes.
Can you give yourself that permission? Can you say what you want without caveats and disclaimers? Can you say what you want and still be sure of yourself even when someone frowns? Can you be ruthless about your ambitions and work towards them without shame? Can you say I like power and money without having to package it with some niceties?
During an interview, Charles Barkley once stated that someone told him that he would get in trouble a lot. He asked why. And they told him because he told the truth and was unfiltered, which would get him into many arguments. Instead of reshaping himself and being what others wanted him to be. He just accepted the consequences of being him.
What opened up for me is the idea that I can be exactly who I want to be, but I must be strategic in the space I choose, with the delivery I have, and the relationships I build to flourish. I also must accept the consequences of people not recognizing the type of person I am. And instead of masking or changing who we all are, let’s lean into being bitches and remember that the only person who governs you is you.
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