Rude: Stop Being Nice and Start Being Bold
By Rebecca Reid
3/5
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About this ebook
During a TV interview with a comedian, journalist Rebecca Reid found herself unable to get a word in edgewise. So, when she put her finger to her lips and shushed him, she became instantly known on the internet as “Rebecca Rude.” It was only then that she realized that being rude could actually be her superpower.
A captivating blend of advice and pop culture, this “breezy feminist guide” (Publishers Weekly) shows you how to use the power of boldness in every area of your life. Exploring famous women who have been perceived as rude—including Princess Margaret, Anna Wintour, Taylor Swift, Meghan Markle, and others—Rude demonstrates how those women used their “rudeness” to get what they want and deserve out of life.
Reid also addresses whether there are different rules of rudeness for women compared to men (yes, there are) and how being taught not to be rude actually prevents women from being successful—especially because when women are assertive, they are often judged as being aggressive. And while there’s a place for politeness, Rebecca argues that it’s never a bad time to stand up for yourself and achieve your dreams.
Rebecca Reid
Rebecca Reid is a freelance journalist and author of the novel Perfect Liars.
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Rude - Rebecca Reid
1
RUDE to Your Friends
The famous thinker Albus Dumbledore (order of Merlin, first class) once said, It takes a great deal of bravery to stand up to our enemies, but just as much to stand up to our friends.
Only, of course, it was J. K. Rowling who wrote those words, and she had a bloody good point: being rude to people whom you’ll never see again is one thing; being rude to people who have known you for your entire life, and who have come to expect a certain type of behavior from you, is much harder. But our friends are some of the people we spend most of our time with, and they’re also the people most likely to ask things of us, so we should learn how to be rude to them.
The film Mean Girls came out when I was thirteen. If you haven’t seen it, put this book down and go and watch it, because honestly, it’s the greatest cinematic triumph of all time and still deserves a retrospective Oscar nomination for Best Picture. For those who saw it in 2004 and not since, a brief refresher: Cady Heron moves back to the US after having been homeschooled in Africa. She’s never experienced Western teenagers before and quickly learns that Girl World is a complicated, self-governing society within itself. The astonishing thing about the film is that the observations it makes about female friendships were as true of my friends at an all-girls school in East Sussex as they were about teenagers at a fictional high school in Illinois. No matter where, girls learned the ability to say, I love your skirt,
to a person’s face and then seconds later, That is the ugliest effing skirt I’ve ever seen,
behind her back.
The cruelty that we inflicted upon one another as teenagers was beyond shocking. I made up rumors about people in our year sucking their own nipples, masturbating with Parker fountain pens, and having affairs with their riding instructors, because my ability to tell a good story made me worth having around. I peer-pressured, bullied, gossiped about, bitched about, and hurt the young women around me, and in turn had all of those things done to me. All of it sneaky, all of it underhanded. And this behavior didn’t necessarily stop after our teen years.
Romantically, we behave—or at least try to behave—completely differently as adults from how we did as teenagers. We don’t call men and hang up over and over again, or make up and break up three times in the same day. We don’t tell our friends every minute detail of our sexual progress toward penetration and we don’t let our friends decide whether we have feelings for someone or not. I noticed somewhere around the time I left college that while my attitude toward men and sex had changed as I’d gotten older, much of my behavior toward my friends (mainly talking about them behind their backs and worrying that they all hated me) had not. The only real difference was that we were gossiping over wine in our own apartments rather than Diet Coke in our parents’ houses.
Friendship is a complex, tricky area that many of us struggle to navigate, but if you (like me) have sleepwalked into your twenties or thirties, still handling your friendships in the same way that you did in your teens, then it might be time to have a think about what needs to change.
Gossip, Aggression, and Anger
It’s a bit of a generalization that male friendships and female friendships are inherently different, but anecdotally it seems to be true. Men and boys are more inclined toward telling their friends if they are annoyed with them, and even occasionally, as kids, resorting to physical violence. Women and girls are much less likely to tell each other when they are annoyed—or to hit each other. But that doesn’t mean that we skip the fight. We just fight in an underhanded, sneaky way, because it’s essential to keep a pretty face on at all times.
There is a tendency with modern feminism to blame the patriarchy for anything and everything, which can seem a little lazy, but… it turns out that it’s often true. The pressure for women to always seem nice and to be sweet-natured peacemakers is an impossible burden to bear. So, in order to try to live up to that expectation, we avoid conflict with our friends by talking about them behind their