Thanks so much for clicking on this article! No worries if you can’t finish it all. I completely understand!
Sorry, I shouldn’t use so many exclamation points. Wait sorry, I shouldn’t be apologising.
Ah. The perils of punctuation and politeness.
Women are often told to remove the exclamation point, delete the “just” from our vocabulary and stop saying “no worries if not”. Whilst some argue it’s an act of courtesy, others say this feminine form of friendliness is a product of sexism.
Listen to Mamamia Out Loud, what women are talking about three times a week. Post continues after podcast.
One woman who knows about this all too well is UK-based author Rebecca Reid, whose book The Power of Rude argues that women in the workplace need to adopt ‘positive rudeness’.
Reid is a journalist who in 2018 made headlines thanks to a run-in on Good Morning Britain, while seated next to Piers Morgan. When Reid was interrupted by a fellow panellist, she asked him to ‘shush’. A social media storm ensued, with hundreds of people labelling her as ‘rude’. But Reid doesn’t see being ‘rude’ as a weakness. Rather, it is a strength that more women should embrace, she says, just like their male counterparts.
“Very often we as women mitigate our behaviour in an attempt to avoid being regarded as aggressive, bossy or controlling,” she tells Mamamia. “Positive rudeness is about freeing yourself from that fear and embracing the idea that someone might think you're rude. It allows you to focus on what you want or need, rather than worrying about someone else's opinion of you.”