Who You Calling That? Is It Time To Retire The Badass Women Title?
Is it time to retire the name to describe powerful women?
The Merriam Webster dictionary defines badass as “informal + sometimes offensive : ready to cause or get into trouble” as a noun. As an adjective, informal + sometimes offensive as in “of formidable strength or skill such a badass guitar player.”
Recently there is pushback to describing women with the term, as explained on NPR that female chefs detest the descriptor.
“ Recently there is pushback to describing women as ‘badass,’ as explained on @NPR that female chefs detest the descriptor. #GenderEquality”
“Badass is a detonated way to describe a kind of cultural male whiteness—an aggressive, swaggering one. And then it gets put onto women, as what feels like a tarnished ‘badge of honor,’ or backhanded compliment,” according to Charlotte Druckman.
“Calling a woman—chef or otherwise—‘badass’ is a way to signify that she’s cool or relevant because she’s acting like a man (specifically, an aggressive, swaggering one); that she is only of interest or worth consideration because she’s going against whatever ‘type’ it is she’d otherwise be categorized as because she’s a woman. She can’t possibly be taken seriously or even close to equal unless she’s aping male behavior. It exalts that bullying, bullish culture at the same time as it puts down the culture of anyone who doesn’t follow that model, female, white or otherwise.”
Gloria Feldt calls out the best in tweets and comments in Take The Lead
The exchange prompted Kristen Bellstrom in Fortune to examine the word as applied to women.
“Druckman’s insight promoted me to stop and think about what we really mean when we use the word to describe a woman. In my case, I’ve reached for it when what I want to convey that someone is fearless, formidable, uncompromising, bold—in short, living life on her own terms, undaunted by anyone else’s conception of how she ‘should’ behave. So, the next time, rather than rely on that overused shorthand, I’ll just say so.”
Still, it has been a useful and mostly embraced term by women and men calling out women they see as fearless. President Barack Obama referred to the U.S. Women’s Olympic Soccer Team this way.
“Still, “badass”has been a useful and mostly embraced term by women and men calling out women they see as fearless. President @BarackObama referred to @USWNT this way. #BadassWomen
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There is loads of merchandise with the moniker.
According to Mediapost, “InStyle marks the third issue of its ‘Badass Women’ edition, the magazine and stylist Karla Welch teamed up to create a merchandise line featuring T-shirts and hair clips emblazed with the slogan ‘Badass Woman.’”
“‘I’ve been impatient to do this for a while, and we finally got there for the August Badass Women issue, thanks to the brilliant Karla Welch, who designed the T-shirt,’ InStyle EIC Laura Brown told Publishers Daily. Designer Saskia Diaz designed the limited-edition hair clips.”
According to The Story Exchange, in a recent keynote, Sallie Krawcheck, co-founder and CEO of Ellevest, embraced the word. “Start screaming out all of the bad things that happen for our economy, our society, our country, our nonprofits, our families, when women have more money. Because there’s nothing bad that happens when we have more power. When we have more money, our economy grows, our markets our healthier, our families are better off. We’re more badass.”
There is even an enterprise built on the notion, thanks to Jen Sincero and a slew of books, and calendars and journals. According to the Amazon blurb on the 2017 book, You are a Badass How to Stop Doubting Your Greatness and Start Living an Awesome Life, “With more than 3 million copies in print, Jen Sincero's You are a Badass has inspired even the snarkiest of skeptics—encouraging them to embrace their awesomeness, give fear the heave-ho, and start kicking some serious ass. Now it's dressed up in a deluxe hardcover edition, with a new foreword by the author. But it's the same ‘classic’ book that helps you create a life you love via hilariously inspiring stories, sage advice, easy exercises, and the occasional swear word.”
In her 2018 book, You Are a Badass at Making Money, Sincero writes, “My hope is that by speaking, coaching and writing about all the things that make me excited to be spinning around on this planet of ours, I’ll inspire you to recognize, and pursue, whatever it is that floats your banana, to tap into your own little badass, to be you times two, large and in charge, huge like The Nuge.”
The name is embraced and assigned to truly iconic women like Madonna and Nancy Pelosi, Charlize Theron and Rihanna. Forbes recently announced a gift guide for “badass feminists.” It includes a lot of socks and a few totes.
““Badass” is embraced and assigned to truly iconic women like @Madonna, @SpeakerPelosi, @CharlizeAfrica and @Rihanna. @Forbes recently announced a gift guide for “badass feminists.” #FemaleLeaders”
And it has been generationally used from teens and Boomer women to describe the woman of the generation, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
““Badass” has been generationally used by teens and Boomer women to describe the woman of the generation, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. #NotoriousRBG”
At the 2018 Cause the Effect Chicago, Take The Lead reports, “Trisha Prabhum 18, founder and CEO of ReThink, a social enterprise working to end online bullying, is a freshman at Harvard University, and in 2017 was the first female Youth Governor elected in nearly three decades. In high school as a techie, a female and a person of color, she says she was ‘afraid to differentiate myself as a feminist. I didn’t fit the stereotype. In that space it is hard to be who you are. I’m a badass woman who stands up for other women.’”
Take The Lead’s co-founder and president Gloria Feldt writes about the 2018 Women’s Forum of New York. Feldt writes, “Wing co-founder Audrey Gelman welcomed an audience that melded the Forum’s accomplished members largely of a seasoned generation with The Wing’s younger, edgier, up-and-coming members. ‘We use words like ‘badass’ a lot around here,’ Gelman said.”
Over the past decade, many times headlines continued to refer to the women in the article that way, including one recently in the New York Post about a ballerina’s gym workout. Movies have characters described that way, including a headline about Kristen Stewart in “Charlie’s Angels.” And Take The Lead has used the term—but only 15 times—in more than 700 articles.
“@Takeleadwomen has used the term—but only 15 times—in more than 700 articles. In 2014, Take The Lead wrote about the effort to #BanBossy and move to #badass. ”
In 2014, Take The Lead wrote about the effort to #BanBossy and move to badass.
“Ban Bossy PSAs have also been created by people from Beyoncé to Jane Lynch. LeanIn.Org encourages people to take the pledge to #BanBossy, and check out the tips for leaders, educators, etc. and facts on girls’ leadership on the website. The website also features shareable images with inspirational quotes from Michelle Obama to the Secretary of Education Arne Duncan for posting to social media sites such as Instagram and Facebook,” according to Take The Lead.
“I used to be called bossy. Now I’m badass,” the site quotes Katie Couric.
At the 2015 SHE Summit, Take The Lead Co-Founder Gloria Feldt moderated the panel “How Women Can Pave a Path to Corporate Leadership” with Marlene Gordon, VP & General Council Bacardi North America Corporation.
At the conference, “Gordon spoke passionately about the Bacardi Women In Leadership initiative and describes Bacardi women as ‘badass women who make things happen.’ On assertiveness, Gordon reminds us women face implicit biases simply in for speaking up for themselves. She encourages women to go and ahead break all gender stereotypes. ‘You know what you can do. Go do it,’” Take The Lead reports.
It’s meant to be a compliment, but has the time come to retire the word when we refer to women who are doing hard, powerful work and succeeding?
““Badass” is meant to be a compliment, but has the time come to retire the word when we refer to women who are doing hard, powerful work and succeeding? #BanBadass”
Claire Fallon declared the word dead in March of this year in Huffington Post. Fallon writes, “There was a time, of course, when ‘badass’ really did mean something. According to a 2015 Daily Beast article by lexicographer Jesse Sheidlower ― astutely headlined “We’ve Reached Peak Badass. It’s Gotta Stop.” ― “badass” entered the language in the mid-20th century. Like much of American slang today, it was popularized and likely created by black Americans. Badass had an admiring cast from the beginning, describing someone tough and rebellious.”
“@ClaireEFallon declared “badass” dead in March of this year in @HuffPost. Perhaps its overuse in the lexicon is causing the word to retreat from its #power. What shall we use in its place?”
But perhaps its overuse in the lexicon is causing the word to retreat from its power. What shall we use in its place? Still, we have to wonder if the women assigned the word will retire it without a fight.
