Pour Yourself a Cup of Ambition
Okay y’all. This is a RANT.
We need to talk about women and ambition.
Last week we had AOC’s brilliant speech connecting Representative Yoho’s vulgar attack on her to the misogyny women in society face every day. She was criticized as too ambitious.
Read this essay by Rebecca Traister in The Cut that dissects the ways in which the media coverage of AOC’s speech upholds sexism and racism, and privileges white men over everyone else. It’s a brilliant read and call to action.
This week we have reports that some Democrats are pushing for Biden to reject Senator Kamala Harris as a candidate for Vice President because she’s “too ambitious” and might want to be President.
Too ambitious.
That really hits a nerve with me. There is nothing - NOTHING - wrong with ambition.
OF COURSE Senator Harris is ambitious! So is AOC. We should celebrate them for it! As a Black woman and a Latinx woman, they had to be so much more ambitious than everyone around them to even consider running for office, much less win. Note that the same charge of ambition has been leveled against Senator Warren, Senator Gillibrand and Senator Klobuchar multiple times, including during their presidential campaigns. Not a coincidence. Marianne Williamson got the “not serious” label instead, which is equally bad.
(Also, shouldn’t the Vice President want to be President? Isn’t that kind of a job requirement? I would like the Vice President to be able to immediately step into the job if, god forbid, that was necessary. Seems like an important skill.)
All politicians are ambitious, but in men it’s not called ambition; it’s called tenacity and strength. Danielle Campoamor points out in The Independent that the very same things “some Democrats” don’t like about Harris are seen as strengths in Biden. Go figure.
Let’s talk about what’s really going on.
What’s really going on is that women - and especially Black women and women of color - are not allowed to be “too” anything: ambitious, loud, angry, big, funny, smart, in charge, “ethnic” (I really hate that one), competent, messy, emotional. Society - and let’s be real - some white men and some white women (remember all white people benefit from white supremacy even when it’s wrapped in patriarchy), want women to fit into perfect little boxes where we are not too much and we make everyone comfortable. And, there are a lot of people in this country who have problems believing a woman can be President - especially a Black woman like Senator Harris.
Someone once told me that being “too much” is the flip side of not being enough. It’s two sides of the same coin. Women balance all day long between trying not to be too much and not being enough. It’s maddening and exhausting.
Many women I coach get stuck in thought loops about not being or doing enough. Or being afraid to use their voice because people might think they’re too much. Notice those thoughts. Then remember WHY you’re having them. You’ve been conditioned to play small, when really we need your whole self shining in the world.
When you are made uncomfortable by another woman’s ambition, notice it. Dig down into that discomfort and sit with it. I’ll bet you’ll find your own feelings of not enough/too much underneath. Tell those thoughts you see them and you are choosing to be your full, real, best self instead.
Last weekend, I rewatched some of 9-to-5. Here’s the trailer. Parts of it feel old -all the typewriters and smoking -but a surprising amount is still relevant. We may be in C-suites and Congress now, but do not mistake that for equality.
I don’t know about you, but I am ambitious AF. And proud of it. I am not here to make people comfortable. No thank you. No small boxes for me. The world needs my light to shine brightly (said the Leo) because when we shine bright, we change the world.
So, pour yourself a cup of ambition today. You’ll need it when we tear this shit down.
XO,
Patty