Both celebrate outspoken achievers – as Hillary Clinton does – but they’ve been hijacked, too, to sell meaningless promises
When I joined the Guardian, many years ago, one of the first notes I received was about the use of “feisty”: it was banned by the style guide in relation to women. Feisty, I was told, was fundamentally patronising: one of those words, like spirited or special, that in certain circumstances seems euphemistically to undermine its own meaning. I used it once in print and never again.
No one says feisty any more. But its modern iterations – “badass” and “kick-ass” – are as prevalent as ever, and seem ripe if not for retirement then at least for revision. Badass, in its original form, was 1950s American slang for tough guy. Now it is often used to evoke a woman’s uncompromising stance, irrespective of context. Ruth Bader Ginsburg is a badass, as is Wonder Woman. Beyoncé is a badass, of course, as I guess was Margaret Thatcher. There are no criteria other than a sort of mouthy prominence, so that, while it might be weird to call a man at the top of certain professions a “tough guy” (unless you’re Donald Trump addressing the Turkish president), for women badass is a near-universal term of praise.
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