Poehler was being vulgar in the Saturday Night Live writer’s room and Fallon, in Fey’s telling, “turned to her and in a faux-squeamish voice said: ‘Stop that! It’s not cute! I don’t like it.’” Poehler’s brand of not-nice has been the stuff of feminist lore for a while now, thanks to an exchange she had with Jimmy Fallon, retold in Tina Fey’s Bossypants. I know it wasn’t just “taking a seat at the table” or because you stopped saying sorry. Modesty and niceness are overrated – and I don’t believe for a second that they are the traits of wildly successful women. I’m sick of powerful women who rely on self-deprecation and likeability to make people feel comfortable with their success. It’s an all-too-obvious but still much-needed call to women who’ve been told for far too long – at the office, at school, all over the internet – to be too nice if we want to get ahead (or just get along). Instead of telling us that her success is thanks to good luck and other people’s good will, Poehler makes clear in the book that her path to fame was paved with hard work and a refusal to take any shit. But Amy Poehler’s “bitchiness” is the kind to which we can all aspire. I’m not a fan of the various iterations of “bitch” – Basic Bitch, Boss Bitch, Betches – that popular culture has adopted lately.
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