What’s the deal with the Ban Bossy campaign? And where do the stakes truly lie?

by Ashley Canino

What’s the worst thing to call a young girl? At least a few common epithets come to mind, but this week’s addition to the list, “bossy,” has stirred significant controversy. The new “B” word is a misogynistic label disproportionately aimed at girls, one that causes women to lead conciliatory adult lives—this according to Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In organization and the “Ban Bossy” campaign co-sponsors. The platform addresses a less obvious, but still powerful angle in the fight for gender equality, so when premier journalists—especially progressive female journalists—began taking shots at the campaign, I sought to understand what about it engenders the negativity.

The campaign debuted with two video spots: one features young girls listing the things that they will not accomplish after taking the “bossy” label to heart; while the second  taps big names like Beyoncé, Jennifer Garner, Condoleezza Rice, and Jane Lynch, giving us sound bites on the impact of words like “bossy,” “stubborn,” and “pushy.” I, like many women, can remember at least one time as a child or teen when I was unfairly chastised for being bossy, though I wasn’t being necessarily more assertive than my male peers. I’m not sure what long-term effect the word had on me, if any, but I can see how it has affected some of my girlfriends, not to mention the boys who grew up to be men who still think self-confident women are nothing more than bossy. Among a few other journalists, though, the feeling is apparently alien.

Time‘s Jessica Roy’s strongly titled response, “I Don’t Give a $*%& If You Call Me Bossy,” came across my various social-media feeds more than once. It is a first step toward understanding why campaign detractors are so adamant in their reproach despite Sandberg’s seemingly admirable goal. One of Roy’s critiques, and a popular one, is that the platform aims to restrict language and in doing so gives bossy more power. “Perhaps we should teach girls to embrace the word bossy, to channel their bossiness into productive methods of leadership,” writes Roy, “Instead of being hurt when someone calls them it.” That is a noble sentiment, and one that can also be found in the pages of the Ban Bossy handbook for parents, downloadable from the campaign website: “Explain to the girls in your life that ‘bossy’ is a word often used to make girls feel bad about speaking up. Brainstorm examples of when being ‘bossy’ is a good idea.” And do the campaign materials encourage behavior in the vein of the alpha male, “corporate norm,” which Roy cites from a USA Today piece on the issue? Hardly. Sandberg’s guide recommends parents encourage their daughters to commit “small acts of assertiveness,” like allowing her to “order her own food at a restaurant, or shake hands and make eye contact with a new acquaintance.” The idea isn’t to teach girls to act like boys—that buys into the presumption that boys just are more assertive and women should be able to get around it—but rather to encourage girls to grow into the equally assertive adults they would naturally become.

Ann Friedman, female journalist cum Twitter darling, previously interviewed by The Riveter, weighed in with, “The Problem With Sheryl Sandberg’s ‘Ban Bossy’ Campaign.” With her statement, “I’ll admit it: Bossy doesn’t bother me. Maybe it’s because I’m a grown-up, proudly self-identified boss-lady,” Friedman writes, identifying a flaw in her own take on the campaign and in Ms. Roy’s. The campaign is about how the word bossy affects young girls, so whether Friedman, Roy, or even Sandberg is affected by the word, they aren’t the right demographic. Ban Bossy targets young girls who may not have even dreamed of being a boss yet, let alone been on the editorial staff of a major magazine. Friedman goes on to compare bossy to more blatantly derogatory words such as “slut” and “cunt,” which pack more sting than the relatively innocuous new buzzword. The impacts of highly sexualized epithets are in a different vein from what Lean In seeks to address. Is that a problem? The organization seeks to empower women and see them in leadership roles, with much of their platform surrounding work atmospheres. The concept behind bossy seems right in their wheelhouse. I would be more taken aback if Sandberg presented herself as an expert on the impacts of those other labels.

So where did these talented and respected journalists, with whom I tend to agree, get the wrong idea about this campaign? From the campaign itself. All Ban Bossy content calls for the audience to take a pledge, which equates to clicking a “I will #banbossy” button and sharing a link to the campaign homepage via their preferred social media sites. This obvious and necessary play for social media traction is misleading. Had the branding not aimed for simple and alliterative, but rather accurately descriptive, the conversation may have been less negative. Then again, maybe no one would be talking about it at all. The times require a certain hashtag-ability to make any social campaign successful and broad-reaching.

Another campaign choice aimed at pop relevance versus message clarity is the inclusion of Beyoncé, whose 2013 song “Bow Down Bitches (I Been On)” drew fire for  lyrics that subjugate women and specifically call out and stomp on the aspirations of young girls who want to be like the superstar performer. Don’t get me wrong, this writer loves Beyoncé, and on her eponymous, late-2013 LP release she included the “Bow Down” hook on “Flawless,” which also featured a speech from feminist author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. But even to me, as an adult, Beyoncé’s role in the fight for gender equality is ambiguous. Little girls are likely taking in more of her visual cues and provocative language than they are considering the nuanced character of the contemporary feminist when taking in Mrs. Knowles-Carter’s latest hit. We can assume the singer, alter ego Sasha Fierce, was included in the campaign due to her wild success and the omnipotent supervisor-role,which she put forth in her HBO documentary Life Is But a Dream. But we still remember Queen B’s lines: “I heard your boo was talking shit / I told my crew to smack that trick.” Is that what we mean by “it’s okay to be bossy?”

The Ban Bossy misnomer is unfortunate, because the underlying platform appears to be one with which most of us, even the detractors, can get on board. Hopefully in the coming weeks Lean In and Sandberg will identify the marketing missteps generating backlash, and begin to draw more publicly on the PDF materials available from the campaign’s site—the far more nuanced and actionable layers of the “bossy agenda”. Perhaps Beyoncé will speak out on how a woman can be a boss without being exclusionary or condescending to other women. In the meantime, the media whirlwind surely isn’t hurting the campaign’s notoriety. At best, we can hope the conversation is as strong among the young girls Ban Bossy was built for as it is among its adult proponents and critics.