Too blunt, too cold, too aggressive. Maybe you’ve read them on your report card at school, heard them in your one-to-one at work or felt them at the end of a boring and undoubtedly awkward date. Labels seem to follow women as closely and ever-shifting as shadows. For a long time, to get ahead the status quo demanded a shift in behaviour on women’s part, to be smaller, quieter, and duller. Now, women are pushing back against the labels that have tried to define them and finding power and comfort in embracing their femininity.
I remember the end of a break-up about five years ago where my ex-boyfriend at the time told me I was “too much” and he “couldn’t cope with it.” I was absolutely crushed. It felt like a dagger to the heart, it felt like a complete critique and dissection and attack on my character, everything I felt was great about me, was also something somebody else found exhausting and unloveable.
I was too loud, too feisty, too non-conforming, the word felt like a weapon used to punish me, and unfortunately, this was a sentiment that carried through into my working life as well. In the workplace I was taught that I needed to be silent and stop making noise, get in line and not be the truest version of myself.
I would love to say my story is unusual, but it isn’t. Most women have a story where, if not an ex-partner, an employer, or a family member has described them as too something and we know how damaging this can be, especially at work.
Historically, labels have been used to silence and shame women at work with terms such as “aggressive’’, “difficult’’ and “pushy’’ at the top of the list. An article in the Harvard Business Review, which looked at 200 performance reviews within one company, revealed a gender bias in feedback containing the term “too aggressive”. The results found that 76% of the instances were attributed to women, while only 24% of men were identified as having such a communication style.
Many women also report receiving inappropriate and infantilising comments at work such as “good girl” which to me sounds like we are dogs doing a trick in Battersea Park. After all, an argument between two female MPs Nadine Dorries and Edwina Currie in 2012 was described as a ‘catfight’.
We know far too well that language has power, and the use of stereotypical labels to categorise women can also dehumanise and objectify us in the process. The truth about labels is that unfortunately: they will never go away, be it for men or women.
Stereotypes have existed from the beginning of time and will continue to exist in a misogynistic world, especially for women in positions of authority. We only need to look at Hilary Clinton being described as shrill during the presidential election in 2016 by Donald Trump, which added to the fear of anti-intellectualism in the wake of the 2016 election. However, since the rise of internet feminism in the late 2010’s we are starting to see women reclaim these sexist labels for themselves. Actor and writer Lindy West created a series for Hulu called Shrill where she describes her reclamation of the often derogatory term as “an important part of any social justice movement, it’s really important to highlight the double standards that seek to diminish women’s credibility and "Shrill" is a word we use to shut women up. I want women to be louder.’’ And so the word shrill loses its power when we use it as a tool to empower us and turn it on its head when defining women in the workplace.
Even more recently, we have seen Gen-Z reclaiming words such as ”bimbo’’ through the hashtag #bimbotok on TikTok. The original term, which was once considered a heavily gendered insult aimed at young blonde women, portrayed women as airheaded - evoking figures like Paris Hilton or Katie Price. Widely seen as a trend reclaiming hyper-femininity, in a magazine interview one Gen-Zer describes discovering BimboTok as “an identity revolution” because it creates a space where girly interests and aesthetics are celebrated rather than shamed. Historically, at work, women were cautioned to leave femininity at the door on the way to leadership; to wear black if they wanted to be taken seriously and pantsuits (never skirts) if they wanted to be listened to in a boardroom. Now, more and more women are embracing their femininity at work, painting the C-suite in pink, and perhaps that’s because a new generation of women is entering the workforce or because last summer we all watched as the legacy of a plastic doll evolved into something new and modern and utterly empowering. Either way, it’s safe to say this new and improved Barbie Effect is working overtime.
This new trend shows that reclaiming unapologetic femininity is not something to run away from but to embrace. #BimboTok feels like a protest. Dressing like Boardroom Barbie feels like a revolution. It feels like a crucial choice to debunk misconceptions about women and the labels they’ve dealt us and reclaim our right to be assertive in the workplace.
We can see this with Meghan Markle’s ‘’Archetypes’’ podcast which launched in 2022 that includes a series of interviews with celebrities, artists and historians discussing stereotypes that get levelled against women. The aim was to “investigate, dissect and subvert the labels that try to hold women back". Mariah Carey discussed reclaiming the word Diva, a label synonymous with her career and seen as a negative element to her brand, stating ‘’I don't care. I'm like, when I can, I'm going to give you diva."
Labels can define us or we can use them to empower us. The penalties can be harsher for women of colour who are told they’re ‘’bossy’’ or ‘’aggressive’’ or they can be just the thing that launches you into a new dimension and allows those who feel silenced to find their tribe.
Poppy Jay, filmmaker and Presenter of BBC Sound’s Brown Girls Do It Too which exists to open the conversation around sex for Asian girls shared with me: I was always labelled as loud, chaotic and ooful, which in Bengali means crazy woman,’ or someone who doesn’t think before they speak. The podcast has helped me embrace who I really am, and I am loud and chaotic and the podcast is a proof and a success of that’’.
Cyran Field-Bampton, 37 founder of Corporate Style Story and Lawyer, Consultant, and expert negotiator, shared “I was told from when I was a child regularly ‘’Don’t get too big for your boots.’’ Self-advocacy is very important for me, and I always challenge the status quo, this comes from my comfort with advocating for myself and it comes from seeing my mum do it. It’s ok to have boundaries and also enforce boundaries and it is my right. People have tried to silence me and ‘’children are seen not heard” and I embrace being ‘’too big for my boots’’ because if it means I am not afraid to be silent then so be it.
It feels that in a society where women are using these historically oppressed terms to propel themselves forward and find comfort and power in these labels rather than to shut them down, maybe it's not a question of whether I was too much. Maybe you’re not a diva, you stand up for yourself. It feels like we are dissecting and asking ourselves the right questions and realising these labels are a pawn in a much bigger game of the patriarchy and we can find power within those terms to be unapologetically who we are.
Like Dolly Parton famously said: ‘’I’m not offended by the blonde jokes because I know I’m not dumb and I am also not blonde’’. Too right. The jokes are on them.