Rethinking Being a "Boss"

Recently, the video campaign against the word “bossy” exploded across various social networking sites – Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, all blowing up with the mantra, “Ban Bossy” as made viral per celebrity-status women such as Beyoncé, Condoleezza Rice and Jane Lynch. The video, now grossing over 2 million views on YouTube, promotes the idea of female empowerment through discouraging the use of the word “bossy” and likewise synonyms to describe powerful women. Thus, the statement from Beyoncé, “I’m not bossy, I’m the boss” became idolized by millions as a means of standing up for women’s roles in powerful positions.

For anyone who doesn’t know what video I’m talking about you can find it here

 

When I first watched the video, I distinctly remember commenting on my friends Facebook post with something along the exact line of, “Love it!!! :D” And indeed…. I did love it.

Over the course of the next week, the video stirred in my mind as I watched it several times and of course, shared it with my friends. However, the more I watched it, the more something felt…. off. Something about the video was bothering me, and I wasn’t quite sure what it was yet.

Finally, over the course of dinner with my boyfriend Adam, who is usually the chosen victim of my unrelenting vent sessions, I realized why the video had come to leave a bitter taste in my mouth.

I’m not bossy, but I’m not a boss. I’m a leader.

Let’s take the video a step further, shall we? I challenge you to think outside the catchy, well-made popularized video that has caught the attention of so many people, including myself, for just five minutes, and think, really think, about what the word “boss” still entails.

To me, a boss is someone who knows what needs to be done and isn’t afraid to tell people what that is. They order, direct, and take command of others when things need to get done and they are the most qualified personnel to do so. A boss walks into a room, sees things as they are, and knows they can be better. So, they tell people how things should be.

This sounds great, right? This sounds exactly like what we want from modern women who aren’t afraid to take charge and tell people how it is. After all, a man can do the same thing and he is immediately respected as the boss, whereas, and the video makes this connection seamlessly, women are given the negative connotation of being bossy.

But what if I don’t want to be the boss? What if I don’t want to tell people what to do, but would rather, tell people what to do and then do it with them? This is the difference between being the boss and being the leader. A boss stands behind others and tells them what to do. A leader stands with others and works with them on what to do.

The video is absolutely right. Women who take charge are immediately shot down, avoided and seen as “control-freaks” or “bitches.” Because of this, girls from the youngest of ages turn down opportunities to take charge because they would rather follow than be seen as one of the above. In this way, I’m totally on board with the Ban Bossy campaign and discouraging words that further this vicious cycle.

However, even the video itself states “words matter” and again, I can’t emphasize this enough, they’re absolutely right. Words DO matter. And the word “boss” still doesn’t encompass what we should encourage from our female population.

Let’s encourage women to be leaders. Let’s promote the idea of being unafraid to tell people what to do, and then being as equally unafraid of doing it with them. Let’s further the gender-equality goals of women by using a negative-connotation-free word while also furthering a work ethic that extends to all genders. Let’s love the idea of both women and men, acting as leaders in the world through their actions and words.

Let me do a bit of restating here in case Beyoncé fans are reading this, and I realize there’s a lot of you. I’m fine with this video and this campaign. I love that the media is taking a role in trying to change the stereotype of powerful women by utilizing fabulous celebrities. Of course the communication major in me also loves the fact that people are taking time to realize what words mean. It’s been said before by countless language-lovers: there is no such thing as a synonym. We need to think about what a word means, not just regurgitate what others feed us with open mouths and empty minds. I myself already stated that I am completely guilty of doing this with this video in particular. My immediate reaction of “Love it!!! :D” could not be any more obvious of that. This happens with a lot of things – popular celebrities say a word or an idea and we as the consumers eat it up, letting the word go in our ears and directly out our mouths. Instead, I think those words, as good-intentioned as they may be, should take a detour from our ears, to our minds, where they can be processed and evaluated before exiting the mouth. It would really save a lot of bad ideas from spreading. Cliché alert, but I posted this Proverbs verse on social media a while back that seems appropriate, “A fool takes no pleasure in understanding, but only in expressing his opinion.”

 With all that said, I’m not trying to stop this campaign from gaining attention. It's awesome if you like this video; I still do. I’m just saying it only went halfway in redefining a good role for women. Being a leader is humbling, it’s about furthering our purpose as human beings to help others through loving others. It’s not about being better than others so you now have the entitlement of telling people what to do, it’s about truly being a better person than you were yesterday, which makes you capable of achieving greatness among others.

I challenge everyone and anyone who might be reading this to think about what we see. Let’s all start thinking of ourselves as leaders, innovators, doers, and workers. Go further, strive to be a leader, rather than a boss.

Words do matter, make them count.