Lady Boss. She-EO. She Hulk. Boss Babe. Girl Boss. Boss Bitch. Mompreneur.

I may be alone in this, but these titles make me cringe so hard my face cramps. This latest development of “female empowerment” only translates to placating women. Pandering. Calming us down with representation. I’m sorry, but last I checked, ovaries were not a determining factor in how well someone performs a job. The fact that we’ve had female bosses and business owners for decades, but now feel the need to accentuate the fact that they are, in fact, FEMALE, is utterly ridiculous. It’s clear we’re being pandered to, right? Right??

Bossy Women, Assertive Men

When a woman is assertive, she is called bossy. A bitch. When a man is assertive, he is, well…assertive. We have been shoving women into lace-covered boxes for far too long, determining which traits she can have because she’s a woman (kind, nurturing, creative, etc.) , and what traits she has despite being a woman (authoritative, determined, ambitious, etc.). And society has an opinion on both.

It’s because of these expectations that some women are leaning in perhaps with hashtags like #ladyboss. I get it. They want to shove their uterus in the doubters face. Look, even with a uterus, I can STILL run a business. On the one hand, yes, I see the humor. On the other hand, this is only emphasizing what they want us to believe: that even though we have lady bits, we can still play the game with the boys. I believe we’re actually hurting ourselves and our future generations of young girls.

Authoritative And Female, not Despite

A young girl should not have ambitions of titles where her gender is placed BEFORE the title. This is like saying despite being female, I am also this. It’s one thing for a man to say it. It’s entirely different for a woman to say it. We may have been attracted to seeing lady, female, and babe in front of things once upon a time. It showed we were standing up, claiming these titles. That’s right, sucker, I’m a woman AND I’m a CEO. Suck it. Rub it in their faces, I get it. But at this point, now it’s only a slight on our own.

If I become a successful business woman, the last thing I’d want to do, is call attention to my gender as though I’m proving everyone wrong. They were wrong, and it’s not up to me to prove it to them. I do that by simply becoming a successful business woman. But by continuously calling attention to our gender with terms like Lady Boss, how can we expect men to ever let it go? If we want to be seen for our minds, our hearts, our intentions, our passion, then we have to be the first to stop demanding we be seen as women first. The more we simply match men, the more our gender will stop becoming something we even need to think about. And given where gender is going, expanding to be more than simply man and woman, it’s high time we stop focusing on it anyway.

Mother’s First, Human Second

The second issue I see is when it comes to women, who just so happen to have children, being titled Mom above all else. I address the mothers reading – you are MORE than that. You have a mind, thoughts, dreams, ideas. Maybe you have side or full-time businesses, work part/full-time, have written a book or a blog, volunteer regularly, nurture a creative or artistic skill, pursue self-study, and on and on the list goes. You are NOT a mother first, not even a woman first, despite what society tells you. You are a HUMAN first. Which means if you are an entrepreneur, call yourself a damn entrepreneur, don’t belittle it by emphasizing that you are a mother first, who happens to have a business with the minimizing title of Mompreneur.

News flash: most women will become mothers. That’s because ONLY women can be mothers. But that also means that even most men are fathers. Yet you will never see Dadpreneur used by these men. Why? Because it’s belittling. Most business men you’d never know they were fathers, because society doesn’t expect them to be dads first. Society expects you to be a mom first, so I get needing to placate society by stating that you recognize you are a mom first with these titles. But please recognize that this is only so society doesn’t judge you. It’s likely now how you see yourself. It’s high time we stop catering to society and diminishing ourselves and our achievements, let alone reducing our value always and forever to our damn uterus.

Religion Plays, Too

The worst offenders of pretending to lift women up, while actually keeping them down is religion. Most organized religions like Christianity and it’s demented offspring (Evangelical, Protestant, Mormon, Jehovah’s Witness, etc.), Muslim, and more view women as second class. They do not hold positions of power, are ineffective when it comes to bestowing blessings, and are entirely reduced to having children. Why wouldn’t we be? These religions were ALL created by pathetic men, with the sole intention of keeping themselves at the top and women on the bottom. But times are changing, and women’s anger has been rising for years. So to placate us, they give us tiny roles of responsibility, giving us the semblance of power. Perhaps a woman is in charge of other women, or perhaps she can address women in talks. But her power is always reduced to effecting women.

The Mormon church, for example, has a Young Women Presidency and a Relief Society Presidency= the two structures for women. These are the only roles you’ll see women. The worst part of this is that in Mormonism, the wife carries the sole responsibility of ensuring her family gets into heaven. She is responsible for rearing the children, taking care of the house, you know, the “traditional” female roles assigned to us by men. So if her children stray from the cult, er, religion, it is the mother’s fault. All the responsibility, none of the glory.

Add to this fact that in the Mormon church women cannot enter heaven unless married, whereas a man can. Not only can a man enter wifeless, he can also have multiple wives. So women shouldn’t worry if they perish before being married, there is a polygamist husband waiting to claim them once in heaven. Because evidently God doesn’t accept them as they are, complete without a man. So the idea that women are lesser goes so deep, the women in this religion may not even think to question it. Now we have everything going on in Islam where women are taking a stand by casting off sexist hijabs, defiantly cutting their hair, and walking openly in protest with their fellow sisters. And this is freaking Islam out.

An Inch to Placate Our Rage

How much evidence do we need to see that religion, and society, was designed by men and they will do anything to keep the power? Even if that means giving women an inch so that we quiet down. And these titles, commercials, movies, are one of those ways. It is no longer a title that we owned and say with pride, but a way of pandering to women. See? Look, we think you’re powerful too. Who runs the world? Girls! Sigh Shut up Beyoncé- you know that’s not true. Girls don’t actually run the world, do they? Not even close. (Not only that, but continuing to call us girls, instead of women is another subtle way of infantizing women.) If we can’t even command basic human rights, how the hell are we “running the world?” It is such a disgusting, blatant lie, and clearly only a way to soothe our rage.

This happens over and over and over again. Women wake up, realize the raw deal they’ve been served, demand more, are placated by the tiniest of wins such as the right to vote or ability to get jobs or buy property, and we quiet down, until we realize once more, it’s not enough. And now, in America, the “land of the free”, women are going in reverse. We are losing basic human rights like access to birth control. How many Lady Boss shirts will it take to soothe women after this slap to the face? How many cringey commercials of “empowered girls” will we accept before we recognize the pandering? When will we finally say “Keep your damn title, I want it all!”??

The time is now. We are more than our damn gender. And if we really are the Lady Boss we claim to be, or society says we are, than it’s high time we are paid equally to men, have equal number of leadership positions, have body autonomy, and are no longer addressed by the fact that we are mothers before anything else.

To My Female Leaders

I urge you to stop using terms like Lady Boss or She-EO or BossBabe, and beg you to see how you’re belittling yourselves by continuing this. You must stop calling attention to the fact that you are a woman first. You are a human first. Your parts have zero effect on your ability to do your job, so why are we calling attention to it? If we call attention to it, we’re only asking everyone else to pay attention to it. Do we forever only want to be seen as women first? Women who happen to be bosses? Mothers who happen to be entrepreneurs? Can we finally see that this fixation on our sex is becoming detrimental? We are no longer rubbing it in their faces, we are instead playing right into their hands, by saying “Even though I’m a woman…I run a business.” Stop it.

If you want to use your gender, end it at businesswoman. No more, no less. It’s the same as businessman. No more unique titles which only call attention to the newness, and strangeness, of women in power. It needs to become normal, not anything unique. I know if I become a huge CEO one day, I’d be pissed if people commented on my gender before my business acumen, brilliant ideas, or leadership qualities. And you should be as well. You are one of the few women in power, so you have the power to change the narrative. You have the opportunity to truly empower women and end the pandering.

Do it like a boss, not a Lady Boss. Do it like a leader, not a girl leader. Be a CEO, not a She-EO.

You Are A Boss- Nothing More

We are all more than our gender. It’s high time we recognize this in society. If you’re a man, banish these belittling terms from your vocabulary. They are not empowering to the women in your lives. If you’re a women, recognize how you’re belittling yourself with these terms, and minimizing your and other women’s achievements. We can move on from our gender-fixated society, but we must first recognize the hollow empowerment of terms like these before we can demand true recognition.