It’s my first year of engineering and my lab partner is an arrogant know-it-all.1 At the start of the lab, we’re asked to predict the outcome. I am certain I know what will happen, and I say it. He dismisses this as if the opinion is trivial, tells me “that’s not how this works,” and writes something else (i.e. his opinion) on our worksheet.
Two hours later, we’re recording the empirical evidence that I was right.
In the four (oh god, four) years I’ve been on YouTube, I’ve been lucky enough not to receive mean comments. There was one about my hair (what is wrong with it anyway?), some grumpy complaints about my video editing (all warranted), and a few condescendingly smug pieces of advice.
Today, on this video, someone cried ‘ditzy!’
LOL, like, really? *giggle giggle* *flutters fingers*
Look, this didn’t hurt my feelings. It’s not even mean, really. I think they’re trying to ‘help’ me (thanks buddy!) But nonetheless, it’s a comment I want to unpack.
The Cambridge dictionary says "a ditzy person, especially a woman, is silly."
According to dictionary.com, it also means "harmlessly eccentric."
Likewise, ‘silly’ has various definitions: "stupid or foolish," "absurd or ridiculous," "humourous and playful in a clownish, whimsical, or exaggerated way."
Anytime a negative word is strongly gendered, it bears examining: Is the word negative because the behaviour it describes is negative, or is the word negative because the behaviour it describes is female (or male)?
‘Ditzy’, by definition, is a female-centric insult. It conjures images of Elle Woods from Legally Blonde and London Tipton from The Suite Life of Zach and Cody.
If you remember your Aristotle, there are three tools of persuasion: ethos, pathos, and logos. Ethos being, essentially, the credibility of the speaker.
As a rhetorical appeal, ethos is known as “the appeal to authority” or “the appeal to credibility.” When it comes to ethos, one important consideration is how the speaker carries themself and how they present themselves to the audience […]
Ethos can also be influenced by nonverbal factors as well, such as posture, body language, eye contact, and even the speaker’s choice of clothing.
-thesaurus.com
Our commentor’s implication being that ‘ditziness’ precludes intelligence, therefore eroding the ethos of the video.
Like most woman, I have tried out and discarded various ways of showing up to the world, whether hoping to meet others’ expectations, fit in, escape ridicule, or simply get what I want.
It’s grade six. I’m on the playground. My nail chips. I’m aware I have an audience.
“Oh my gosh!” I squeal. “I just broke a nail!”
“Wow, I’ve always wanted to hear you say that,” a girl in my class remarks before running away to share this oh-so-riveting story.
I was a smart kid, labelled gifted by the standardized tests you take at age nine. Because of this, there were girls who resented me for my grades and classmates who sang a constant chorus of “her [play, newspaper, math fair]2 is not even that good.”
I was also very girly: I wore dresses every day, loved pink, was obsessed with lip gloss, and talked a lot, quickly, at a high pitch. Because of that, there was the boy who said he wanted to put duct tape over my mouth to shut me up, the kids who mimicked everything I said in singsong, and a continuous undertone of “god she’s so annoying.”
But even in the annoying, there was something people loved about the girliness. There was a novelty in it, something that made other kids invest in the caricature of myself they expected me to be. I mean, I didn’t actually care about my nail chipping. I just thought that was what people wanted me to say — and, importantly, that saying it would get me positive attention — and I was right.
For some time, I leaned into ditzy3. It felt safer somehow, socially. No one’s intimidated or threatened by a silly girl. They might laugh a bit, play around, but she’s in on the joke. And, she’s usually pretty. We should never underestimate the allure of pretty to a 12-year-old.
Eventually, in high school, I decided I was tired of being ‘annoying.’ I wanted out of the joke. So I stopped playing dumb, and trained myself to tone it down. I didn’t stop wearing dresses or lip gloss, but I certainly stopped advertising it. Instead, I leaned extra hard into achieving.
At fifteen, a teacher asks a question in history class. I put my hand up, but she calls on another student.
“I don’t know,” the girl says “But I think Nicole does.”
It was my Hermione Granger phase and I reveled in it. But at the same time, I resented the girly girls, the ones who didn’t tone it down, who acted the way I used to, before I decided not be annoying anymore. People seemed to like them. And it bothered me: how come they got to be girly, when I had to change?
You can’t untie ‘ditzy’ from ‘girly.’ Ever ‘dumb girl’ character in a movie is preoccupied with beauty and fashion, with looking sexy.
It’s not groundbreaking to say many forms of feminine energy are perceived as mindless, unintelligent, and trivial. Although Barbie says to BE who you wanna BE (B-A-R-B-I-E!), no one looks at a Barbie doll and thinks ‘rocket scientist’.
Do we make fun of ditzy women because on some level we wish we could be silly, lean into girlishness, feel like a princess and still have people’s respect?
Or do we truly believe their demeanour makes them into a joke, an object for us to judge, dismiss, and take smug comfort in?
In some ways, being a “silly woman” is the ultimate modern insult. It brings to mind the image of a 1950s wife with the apron and the haircut, her husband saying she couldn’t possibly understand the complexes of the finances so why doesn’t she go bake more cookies?
We’ve worked hard over the past decades to assert that women are smart and capable, to prove we deserve not just one seat at the table, but at least 50% of them. Often, as we did so, we shed femininity so men would take us seriously. This is the reason 18-year-old-me didn’t buy the pink binders, opting for blue because I knew most of my peers would be boys and I didn’t want to be seen as too girly.
Women are powerful, but traditionally feminine qualities are not.
In fact, this is precisely how the idea for one of my favourite characters came about: I wanted to write a woman who was both a girly girl and the intelligent, strategic mastermind of a heist crew. It sounds narcissitic but the anchor image for the character is myself: running across the cobblestones on a Florence street in my baby blue heels and the white sundress with the big bow that made me feel instantly beautiful.
IRL, I am a silly person: playful, ridiculous, sometimes ‘very full-on.’ When I’m with another similarly high-pitched friend, we’re energetic, we’re voracious, and we love wearing cocktail dresses for no reason at all. Our third friend sometimes wears ear plugs around us because of the constant ‘squee’ track, but she’s never once asked us to tone ourselves down.
I think my point is that I accept the accusation of being ditzy.
There’s something powerful in reclaiming femininity as a source of strength. The ‘smart girl’ can wear a ballgown. The ‘strong female character’ doesn’t have to wield a weapon, eschew make-up, or ridicule her giggly peers.
At work, on YouTube, and in my writing, I strive for a balance of authority (i.e. knowing my stuff) and authenticity. For me, being authentic involves being playful, silly, and girly. So far, it’s gone pretty well: my writing makes people laugh. At work, my positivity and enthusiasm are valued as much as my product management acumen. Baby Nicole would be happy to know that we are evolving, that you really don’t have to choose between London Tipton and Hermione Granger.
After all, I got my job using a pink resume.
For the record, he had many redeeming qualities and is a good person — or at least someone I’d be happy to chat to for 15 minutes at a party :)
My gifted IEP involved a bunch of special projects. My favourite was the play. My least favourite was the math fair, until I discovered some math games necessitated the use of sour gummy candy. I found every single sour gummy math game in existence, and sent the teacher off to Bulk Barn.
Sometimes, I copied London Tipton verbatim. Yes, I have squealed “yay me!” Out loud. In public. (And was immediately called out for being fake, for the record).