B!tch Branding

Can I tell you one thing that I hate?  Using the word bitch, or any variation of it, to market something to women. Last month Her Campus sent us a great package with amazing free stuff (shoutout to the BOGO Chipotle giftcard) but the title of Nicole Lapin’s book sparked a discussion about bitch branding. 

Nicole Lapin is: a Northwestern graduate (the valedictorian no less), a nationally-known and well-respected news anchor and journalist, an ambassador for the Starlight Starbrigh Children’s Foundation, a advocate for “Being Smart is Cool,” which is aimed at educating terminally ill kids about global issues, and now an employee at Operation Smile and Points of Light who helped the UN with its Girl Up initiative.  She has also launched her own charity, Lost Girls, which helps young women with career clothing and advice.  She won a Power 30 under 30 award, was a judge for Tribeca Film Festical, and launched CASH Smartwatch, a wearable that tracks your spending.  

I have issues with the idea of reclaiming words within the context of a society that I don’t think has changed enough to let me call myself a bitch without stigma attached.  So knowing that I’m coming in with that idea, I do still have a certain love of the word bitch.  Lily Allan’s Hard Out Here is one of my (many) anthems and I love the movement that says bitches are women whose actions would be accepted if they presented as male.  But still… when I see book covers like Rich Bitch, or:

I just can’t help but get a little mad. I reserve the serious use of bitch to personal, and deep, offenses. I don’t think I’ve ever called someone a bitch. I might have said something was bitchy, or called out a move for being a bitch-move, but if I really dig down, it’s probably because that girl did something badass that undermined/offended/hurt me. Is that really re-claiming the term? 

What exactly is the point of using “Bitch” in the title? It’s come to connote a “no-nonsense,” “savvy,” “everything-on-the-table” type of person, having a “tough-love,” sassy conversation where they tell all of those bitches doing the wrong thing exactly how to the right thing.  What’s concerning to me is that this needs to be a specified type of woman.  Why can’t a woman be like this without branding herself as a bitch?   

This is not a real autobiography, obviously, more a prime example of my point…

Wikipedia defines bitch as “literally meaning a female dog, a slang pejorative for a person, commonly a woman, who is belligerent, unreasonable, malicious, a control freak, rudely intrusive or aggressive. When applied to a man, bitch is a derogatory term for a subordinate.”  Let’s discuss the qualifiers used: belligerent, unreasonable, malicious, a control freak, rudely intrusive or aggressive.  The definition doesn’t even say a woman who is being “too” much of those things, no, it’s a woman who just IS any of those things.  Honestly, these are all traits that a lot of people get to use day in and day out without anybody calling them out, or undermining them by calling them a bitch.  Jo Freeman authored a “bitch manifesto” in 1968: 

“A Bitch takes shit from no one. You may not like her, but you cannot ignore her….[Bitches] have loud voices and often use them. Bitches are not pretty….Bitches seek their identity strictly through themselves and what they do. They are subjects, not objects…Often they do dominate other people when roles are not available to them which more creatively sublimate their energies and utilize their capabilities. More often they are accused of domineering when doing what would be considered natural by a man.“

I raise the question: Why does that make a woman a bitch? Why did we choose a derogatory name for it? 

The women we look to and call bitches: Ann Coulter, Hillary Clinton, and some less-real-more-fictional women are mostly people who are bosses, literally or figuratively, who have fought tooth and nail, don’t abide by society’s rules, and are generally a power threat to someone (commonly referred to as The Man).  We’re using the term bitch to undermine these women’s efficacy, their accomplishments and their power, so again, WHY would we do this ourselves?  I don’t think the self-branding bitch outweighs the undermining bitch just yet. 

 I just wish we’d go with the Queen B’s declaration and idenitifier:

At the very least, don’t JUST be a bitch, be a #bossbitch

• bitch