(Excerpted from my introduction to In Praise of Difficult Women: Life Lessons from 29 Heroines Who Dared to Break the Rules)
In kindergarten, whenever it was time to move from one activity to next, I pitched a fit. If it was time to move from painting time to story time and I wasn’t finished, I stamped my foot, shook my head, yowled like a girl raised by wolves. Mrs. Warnack was forced to pry my fingers off the thick wooden brush handle. Half a century later, I still remember what she said when my parents came in for the conference. “Karen insists on being difficult.”
This wasn’t an era when adults gave a thought to the needs of a girl’s innate character. In the sixties, there was no compromise offered, no suggestion that I might continue working on my painting during recess. The solution was for me to simply stop being difficult.
The phrasing of Mrs. Warnack’s assessment has always intrigued me. She didn’t say I was difficult—that my mulishness was inborn, that being determined and stubborn was part of who I was—but rather, that I chose to be difficult. Which means I could choose to be not difficult. I could choose to be agreeable, complacent, and obedient. I could choose to be a good girl. Boys, of course, would be boys. There was no expectation that they would choose to be anyone but themselves.
My parents and Mrs. Warnack agreed that every time I insisted on being difficult, I would spend the rest of the period in the corner, facing the wall. I stood in that corner a lot. Eventually, I figured out the exact amount of scowling and harrumphing I might convey without being sent to the corner.
This is the kind of woman I’ve become: opinionated, but not so it gets me in trouble. A woman whose default setting is not to rock the boat, who tries to avoid conflict, who uses humor (a lot!) to soften blows and put people at ease.
I became, perhaps, a woman like you.
A difficult woman, as I define her, is a person who believes her needs, passions, and goals are at least as important as those of everyone around her. In many cases, she doesn’t even believe they’re more important—many women in this book were devoted, loving wives and mothers—but simply as important. She is also a woman who doesn’t feel the expectations of the culture in which she lives is more important than what she knows to be true about herself. She is a woman who accepts that sometimes, the cost of being fully human is upsetting people.
A difficult woman isn’t a bitch, although on occasion she might be. She isn’t cruel or selfish or mean—although, again, on occasion she might be. Just like anyone (by which I mean men), she has bad days, she makes mistakes, she loses her temper. A difficult woman is a woman who insists on inhabiting the full range of her humanity.
Difficult women tend not be ladies-in-waiting. Waiting for love, waiting for someone to notice their excellent job performance, waiting for the kids to go to bed, or off to school, waiting until they lose weight and fit into their skinny pants. Instead, she is fueled by her internal engine. She makes other people wait. It’s immaterial whether they worry about her, grow impatient with her, find her frustrating, call her names. Oh sure, they may not like it, or it may hurt their feelings. But most of the time, the bumps along the way fail to deter them from their mission. Standing in the corner for refusing to get with the program is simply part of being difficult.
The twenty-nine iconic women included in this book have inspired me over the years, and to this moment. My mother died when I was seventeen, my father quickly remarried, and I was more or less on my own.
Throughout college, I ministered to my loneliness with biographies of great women. Into my life came Martha Gellhorn, Coco Chanel, Josephine Baker. They were women of a long-ago era, but they felt alive to me: singular, bold, different, difficult. Gloria Steinem, Jane Goodall, and Nora Ephron were in my personal pantheon of living legends I adored.
As I read and wrote, I was a little delirious to discover the many ways in which women can be difficult.
We can be good-natured and competitive (Billie Jean King); sarcastic and vulnerable (Carrie Fisher); quiet, well-behaved, and braver than most men (Amelia Earhart); completely unapologetic about taking everything that is our due (Shonda Rhimes); zany and so off-the-charts talented people don’t know what to make of us (Kay Thompson); ambitious beyond measure (Hillary Clinton).
They come from every background and upbringing, my difficult women. Wealthy, but neglected (Vita Sackville-West), of modest means, but rich in love and attachment (Elizabeth Warren), straight up middle class (Janis Joplin). Many of these women had stable early childhoods; when their fathers left or died, the family descended into poverty (Helen Gurley Brown, Eva Peron, Amelia Earhart). Some were conventionally pretty (Elizabeth Taylor, Gloria Steinem), some were what the French call jolie laide (Diana Vreeland, Frida Kahlo).
But all of them have embraced their messy, interesting lives. All serve as an inspiration for more accommodating women, who like me long to be braver, bolder, more courageous, more outspoken, more willing to upset the status quo.
I love these women because they encourage me to own my true nature. They teach me that it’s perfectly okay not to go along to get along. They show by example that we shouldn’t shy away from stating our opinions. Their lives were and are imperfect. They suffered. They made mistakes. But they rarely betrayed their essential natures in order to keep the peace. They saw (and see) no margin in making sure no one around them is inconvenienced.
These difficult women give us permission to occupy space in our worlds, to say what we think, and to stand our ground. They give us permission to be ambitious, passionate, curmudgeonly, outspoken, persistent, sassy, and angry. They tell us, by their words and deeds, that it’s all right to occupy our humanity.
[NOTE: The fetching t-shirt pictured above can be purchased here.]
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Thank you, I feel validated. I know I'm not the easiest person. I tend to say what's in my head and that maybe shouldn't always be said out loud. I'm better on paper because writing gives me the chance to be the kind, diplomatic, tactful person I would prefer to be instead of the kind but outspoken person who can't help expressing her opinions even if they're not popular or politically correct. At my advanced age I don't think there's any chance I'm going to change, and don't think I could if I tried. But you make me see that's ok.
Here, here. Yeah, you go girlfriend. Uppity women unite!