Those are pretty silhouettes my mom had hand-cut every other year, documenting my growth from a tiny baby into a little girl. I need to confess something to you, I was a bossy little girl. I’ve seen the family videos, subjected to the good-natured ribbing of my family whenever we dust off the old family VHSs. I am embarrassed now by the obvious, my grating desire to take the reigns. But, I have to say–if I had a daughter I’d like to see a little bossy in her.
I’m sure you’ve seen Sheryl Sanberg’s initiative with the Girl Scouts called #BanBossy–and if you haven’t, it’s worth the look. Sanberg and the Girl Scouts are out to ban the word bossy, because that word can reportedly cause girls to fear being leaders among other things.
But then, there is Amy Poehler quoted as saying:
But I just love bossy women. I could be around them all day. To me, bossy is not a pejorative term at all. It means somebody’s passionate and engaged and ambitious and doesn’t mind leading.
I think I’ve mostly grown out of the bossy tendencies, or more I just learned how to channel it all into socially acceptable terms. I think bossy little girls are actually just leaders who haven’t yet learned how to lead in a ways that sit well with people.
And we can cheer for our girls being leaders, right? We can cheer for them having a little moxie and spunk? It may make our (and by our, I mean YOUR because I’m not acquiring any daughters until after you’ve gotten them through puberty THANKYOUVERYMUCH) lives a little more difficult for a season, because training someone to lead well is always difficult. The traits it takes to be a leader often have a very off-putting flipside.
I was a bossy little girl. I was obnoxious and my moxie was unwarranted a lot of (all??) the time. I hadn’t done anything to compel anyone to listen. But, I had a dad who always told me I could be anything I set my mind to…that anything boys could do I could do, too. The men in my family always made me feel like I probably was GOING to be the first female president–and if I didn’t want to do that, I could always fall back on being an astronaut.
So, if you have a bossy little girl or know one–take heart. There is a little leader in there, a girl with ideas and smarts. She’s going to need you to help her grow into a lady who knows how to lead.