No, Sheryl Sandberg, I Don’t Want to #BanBossy

When influential women like Sheryl Sandberg, Beyonce, and Girl Scout CEO Anna Maria Chavez have a message to share, audiences tend to listen. The response, however, isn’t always a positive one, as proven by the backlash to a new campaign designed to empower the potential female leaders of tomorrow: Sheryl Sandberg’s Campaign to #BanBossy
 
Earlier this month, Sandberg – the chief operating officer at Facebook and author of the best-selling book Lean In – launched a public service campaign to ban the word “bossy.” In partnership with the Girl Scouts, #BanBossy is intended to help girls overcome the labels that prevent them from taking on leadership roles as they grow.
 
At BanBossy.com, girls, parents, teachers, managers and troop leaders can discover tips on how to help girls speak up in their everyday lives. We’re all invited to take the #banbossy pledge and share it on social media, and a Ban Bossy video – which features Beyonce proclaiming that “I’m not bossy; I’m the boss” – has received over 2 million views on YouTube.
 
For Sandberg, “bossy” is a word that is damaging to our daughters. Here’s the message that appears on the front page of the Ban Bossy website:
 
When a little boy asserts himself, he's called a “leader.” Yet when a little girl does the same, she risks being branded “bossy.” Words like bossy send a message: don't raise your hand or speak up. By middle school, girls are less interested in leading than boys—a trend that continues into adulthood.
 
“What we know is that stereotypes are holding women back from leadership roles all over the world,” Sandberg told Cynthia McFadden in an interview for Nightline. “This is a word that is symbolic of systematic discouraging of girls.”
 
The #BanBossy Backlash
 
Critics have been quick to point out the flaws in the Ban Bossy campaign, the most obvious being that it’s utterly ridiculous to suggest banning a word from the English language. (For a good laugh, check out the parody video Ban Quirky, which uses the hashtag #banwords).
 
But all jokes aside, there are some very real and relevant criticisms that have been leveled at the movement Sandberg is spearheading. Kelli Hoff at The Daily Beast points out that “worrying about a word is a luxury that only kids who are growing up with a whole host of advantages can afford,” and Margaret Talbot at The New Yorker reminds us that the word bossy “is not actually a synonym, derogatory or otherwise, for leadership or authoritativeness.”
 
Personally, I like the response from James Poniewozik at Time, who acknowledges that “the double standard Sandberg identifies is absolutely real,” but goes on to ask a question that has been on my mind from the beginning: “Why is the solution to encourage aggressive, domineering behavior in women instead of discouraging it in men?”
 
Why #BanBossy Misses the Mark  
 
According to Dictionary.com, “bossy” can be defined as “given to ordering people about; overly authoritative; domineering.” The word almost always has negative connotations (whether in a man or a woman), and has little to do with true leadership.
 
Bossy people are the ones who like to hear themselves talk, and the ones who can’t stop talking long enough to listen to what everyone else has to say. Bossy little girls – and boys and women and men – all need to be called out, and schooled in more effective forms of communication.   
 
I’m all for empowering girls to speak up, and eliminating the myriad ways in which our society subtly and often insidiously discourages our daughters from reaching their full potential. But I don’t see how encouraging bossiness, which is essentially what Ban Bossy does, is going to do either job.
 
I’ve dealt with bossy little girls (and bossy women) my entire life. They are rarely the ones who deserve to lead – and almost always the ones with no real authority to tell others what to do. Why on earth would we want to give them carte blanche to be even bossier still?
 
What about the quiet little girl who never gets called bossy yet excels at STEM? Or the one who leads by example rather than shoving her opinions down everyone else’s throat? Where do they fit into this equation? Are only the bossy little girls destined to become leaders? And is that who we really want at the helm?
 
So no, Sheryl Sandberg, I don’t want to #BanBossy. By failing to distinguish between the girls who display true leadership abilities and the girls with nothing more than a big mouth, your campaign has missed the mark. When you’re ready to forego the gimmicky phrases and get down to the real work of helping ALL little girls develop the skills they need to take their rightful places in positions of power, let me know, because then I’ll be behind you every step of the way.
 
Well, as long as you don’t get too bossy about it.