For a new initiative promoting gender equality, Beyoncé has joined forces with a crew of other impressive high profile women like Condoleezza Rice, Jane Lynch, Diane von Furstenberg and Jennifer Garner on a crusade to #BanBossy.
The ‘Ban Bossy’ movement was launched in collaboration with Lean In, an online community founded by Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg that is dedicated to empowering women, and the website states: “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.”
Essentially, the pursuit of Sheryl Sandberg and co. is to change the discourse from “women in leadership positions are bossy” to “I’m not bossy. I’m the boss.” The issue with their quest to ban the ‘B’ word is that it has never been assigned to a single gender – particularly compared to other girls-only ‘B’ words like bitch, bimbo, bunny boiler and my personal favourite, bubbly [shudder]; in fact, a few years back Kelis actually had the #BanBossy narrative flipped on its head in her song “Bossy” in which she uses the term as a characteristic of female empowerment.
Semantics aside, the cause’s central goal of encouraging more women to be leaders is an irrefutably positive one.
