I was going through old MySpace posts, saving into Word the ones I wanted to keep and deleting the rest. Most of them are just collections of quotes or small little blurbs about random things I barely remember. However, one post in particular struck me. It was about Toxic-Niceness and how being "too nice" can be detrimental to your own happiness and well-being. It's something that I find myself still struggling with on a day-to-day basis. There is nothing wrong with wanting to be liked, but there is a vast difference between being nice and being a doormat. Every day I find myself apologizing to someone who doesn't deserve it, many times people I don't even know. For instance, today while walking along the subway platform I was shoulder-checked by a hurried Wall Street-looking stereotype, and what did I do? I said, "Oops, I'm sorry." The guy didn't even give me a backward glance and my shoulder still hurts, hours later.
You all know that I adore all things vintage, but the nice thing about being born towards the end of the 20th century is that I get to pick and choose which aspects of the prior generations' culture that I want to retain.
I choose: the style, the fashion, the classiness, the femininity
I do not choose: the chauvinism, the ideal of a "seen-and-not-heard" woman, the automatic female response to shut up and smile
I fully believe that I can embrace my femininity and still say what's on my mind. The two are not mutually exclusive!
This is a promise to myself; one that I hope you have made/will make for yourselves, as well.
I. Refuse. To. Be. Toxic-Nice.
Old Post:
My sister got me this great book for my birthday. It's called "Getting In Touch With Your Inner Bitch." Sort of along the lines of "Kiss My Tiara." I love it. It has a great collection of stories and quotes and it really makes a woman stop and think. I realized I needed something like that after noticing how many times people slam into me in the subway and I am the one to apologize. Today was prime example. WHY was I so scared to tell my employers that I was accepting a better offer? I'm always apologizing for everything, always worrying about other people's feelings, never asking for what I want and trying not to be a bother. It's exhausting. So...fuck it. I'm not doing it anymore. I don't want to be Toxic-Nice anymore. I can still be friendly and generally nice, but I'm done with being timid and apologetic. If you don't make yourself happy, no one else is going to do it for you.
"Do what you feel in your heart to be right - for you'll be criticized anyway. You'll be damned if you do, and damned if you don't." ~Eleanor Roosevelt
"A young lady is a female child who has just done something dreadful." ~Judith Martin
"Remember that always dressing in understated good taste is the same as playing dead." ~Susan Catherine
"She was a perfect lady - just sat in her seat and stared." ~Eudora Welty
"I didn't want to be a boy, ever, but I was outraged that his height and intelligence were graces for him and gaucheries for me." ~Jane Rule
"I got desperate and went to one of those expensive matchmakers. She was so romantic: 'You've got to get a guy on the hook. You reel him in slowly.' I asked, 'When do I fillet him?' I don't know much more about relationships, but I can run a fish and chips shop." ~Maura Kennedy
"The word 'lady': most often used to describe someone you wouldn't want to talk to for even five minutes." ~Fran Lebowitz
"I love to see a young girl go out and grab the world by the lapels. Life's a bitch. You've got to go out and kick ass." ~Maya Angelou
"If you always do what you always did, you'll always get what you always got." ~Anonymous
"No woman is all sweetness." ~Mme. Recamier
"After a while, Toxic Niceness begins to feel like that slightly too-tight pair of jeans we sometimes insist on wearing - it might look great to everyone else, but it's hard to sit in for an entire day." ~Elizabeth Hilts
"If you only try to please others, you're going to resent those people you're trying to please, the ones who are often closest to you. If you choose a patht hat you yourself want to take, then you're going to be much kinder to the people in your life." ~Sarah McLachlan
"The emotional, sexual, and psychological stereotyping of females begins when the doctor says 'It's a girl.'" ~Shirley Chisholm
"Show me a woman who doesn't feel guilty and I'll show you a man." ~Erica Jong
"If you're saddled by the need to know the outcome before you set out, you limit your possibilities." ~Janet Carlson Freed
"Nobody's interested in sweetness and light." ~Hedda Hopper
"I always wanted to be somebody, but now I realize I should have been more specific." ~Lily Tomlin
"When in doubt, make a fool of yourself. There is a microscopically thin line between being brilliantly creative and acting like the most gigantic idiot on earth. So what the hell, leap." ~Cynthia Heimel
"There have been women in the past far more daring than we would need to be now, who ventured all and gained a little, but survived after all." ~Germaine Greer
"Toxic Niceness asks, 'Do you like me?' The Inner Bitch asks, 'Do I like you?'" ~Elizabeth Hilts
"Take care to get what you like or you will be forced to like what you get." ~George Bernard Shaw
"I feel there are two people inside me - me and my intuition. If I go against her, she'll screw me every time, and if I follow her, we get along quite nicely." ~Kim Basinger
"Be a first rate version of yourself, not a second rate version of somebody else." ~Judy Garland
"Being a sex symbol has more to do with attitude, not looks. Most men think it's looks, most women know otherwise." ~Kathleen Turner
"You only start being called bitch when you become successful." ~Judith Regan
"Life's a bitch and then they call you one." ~Mary Frances Connelly
"Nobody objects to a woman being a good writer or sculptor or geneticist if at the same time she manages to be a good wife, good mother, good-looking, good-tempered, well-groomed and unaggressive." ~Leslie McIntyre
"We're our own worst enemy a lot of the time, but I still blame men." ~Janeane Garofalo
"When I was eighteen, nineteen, twenty, I would see a woman baking cookies, or toting around a bunch of kids, or wearing lipstick and a tight dress, and I'd think, 'Oh please, baby - liberate yourself." I've come to realize...who am I to decide what women's liberation looks or smells like?" ~Ani DiFranco
"Women complain about PMS, but I think of it as the only time of the month that I can be myself." ~Roseanne Barr
"Love me in full being." ~Elizabeth Barrett Browning
"If sex and creativity are often seen by dictators as subversive activities, it's because they lead to the knowledge that you own your own body (and with it your own voice), and that's the most revolutionary insight of all." ~Erica Jong
"Women are not inherently passive or peaceful. We're not inherently anything but human." ~Robin Morgan
"There's a study in Maine that found if you marry someone who doesn't appreciate you, tries to control you, and always has to be right, you may be unhappy. They also discovered that going without water for long periods of time makes you thirsty." ~Caroline Rhea
"Don't fake orgasms. It's completely ill-spent use of your energy, particularly if you ever want to have a real one." ~Elizabeth Hilts
"The effect of eating too much lettuce is soporific." ~Beatrix Potter
"Nobody's last words are 'I wish I'd eaten more rice cakes.'" ~Amy Krouse Rosenthal
"When I'm hungry, I eat. When I'm thirsty, I drink. When I feel like saying somethiing, I say it." ~Madonna
"God made a very obvious choice when he made me voluptuous; why would I go against what he decided for me? My limbs work, so I'm not going to complain about the way my body is shaped." ~Drew Barrymore
"Oh honey, I would....but I don't want to." Karen Walker, Will and Grace
"In politics, if you want anything said, ask a man. If you want anything done, ask a woman." ~Margaret Thatcher
"Sex and race, because they are easy visible differences, have been the primary ways of organizing human beings into superior and inferior groups, and into the cheap labor on which this system still depends." ~Gloria Steinem
"Life is to be lived. If you have to support yourself, you had bloody well better find some way that is going to be interesting." ~Katharine Hepburn
"I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody." ~Bill Cosby
"I've had the same goal ever since I was a girl: I want to rule the world." ~Madonna
"I was raised to believe that excellence is the best deterrent to racism or sexism. And that's how I operate my life." ~Oprah Winfrey
"Sure God created man before creating woman. But then you always make a rough draft before the final masterpiece." ~Anonymous
I also feel like as women, we are inured with a sense of obligation towards other people's feelings and needs and neglect our own a a result. It's also kind of a biological tendency we are born with; nurturing is essential for having a family. It's a good quality to have, but not when we let ourselves get walked on! Luckily for us, we have the ability to choose not to, and good for for making that choice.
ReplyDeleteNew York will help with that over time, it's part of the reason I came here. Next time some douche bag does that, tell him "Excuse You". Or push him onto the third rail ;)
What a phenomenal collection of quotations. You totally made my day!
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