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Learning to honour my inner bitch: This year, boxing lessons. Next year, a gun? Talking to a friend on Fleet Street over the holidays, I found myself looking for pity. "I get hate mail," say I. "Good, good!" he cried. "I get hate mail that makes me cry," I add, really digging for sympathy now. "Really really excellent!" he says, veering sharply to the topic he really wanted to discuss, my sex life. Around this same time, I am having a heated e- mail exchange with another old friend, Gordon, who says that if he and his best friend, Ken, both Bay Street guys, did a Top 10 list of the toughest women in Canada, I would be at the top. I'd rate even tougher than Diane Francis. Even after I'd discounted this ranking as flattery, I found it disturbing. First of all, no one is tougher than Diane Francis. Look at the woman's productivity. She's a distaff army of one. I shouldn't be on the same list. Besides, what about the CEO of Shell, Linda Zarda Cook? All those judges? What about Hedy Fry? Once, on a crowded ferry with my brother, his wife and son, I went to fetch napkins, and Fry, a very, very large woman, pushed past me, tossed her gigantic briefcase, stuffed with Very Important Government Papers, onto the floor, shoved my things and food aside, stole my seat and grinned at me when I came back. My eight-year-old nephew was pale with fright. My brother and his wife were so shocked they were laughing. Hedy Fry is tough. Plus, all I could think of was Margaret Thatcher. Specifically, Margaret Thatcher crying. The day her own party booted her out of office, and her eyes went all pink and swimmy and heartbroken as she walked out of Downing Street. That image was published on the front page of every newspaper in the world. Not a good photo to mark the end of your career. Especially if people hate you, and people loathed Thatcher. If you are a bitch (which, let's be clear, is what Gordon and Ken were calling me), people want to take you down. Look at Martha, look at Rosie, look at Hillary, look at Nancy Reagan. The Enron debacle involved billions: Has Ken Lay been indicted? No, not even close. But Martha's jury is currently being convened. Besides, I am so not tough. I had five years of analysis ("this should be called therapy," said my analyst in disgust one day) so that I could a) locate my emotions, b) feel them, c) learn to ride them, and there's been no looking back since. Emotions are me. I paid for them, I get to keep them. And I do. (Memo to future generations: Don't bother.) However, this is not an OK state of affairs. I am paid to bitch and I love it, so it's time to toughen up for real. Time to walk the walk. Pretending to be tough is not good enough. This year, I am going to honour my inner bitch. Boxing lessons? First on my list. I really do want to learn how to fight. Then, research. Specifically, the Internet. Bitching is practically a degree course on the Internet. I plow through all the second-wave feminist-standing- up-to-the-patriarchy nonsense. Not that there's anything wrong with standing up to the patriarchy, but this stuff invariably takes place in a world of feminists, womanists, lesbians and academics, etc., with no taste in fashion or good food, and whose range of acceptable activities is so narrowly proscribed that, after the first flush of rebellion, it becomes, well, a little tedious. Then I discover the Bitch Test on thespark.com. Now that's more like it. Besides, it is excellent fun. More than eight million women have filled out the six-page questionnaire. Turns out, everyone is right. I am a bitch. In fact, I am 48% bitch, 10 points higher than the average. Good, I'm on the right path. It seems that 29-year-old women are the most bitchy, but even they are only 42% bitch. I am a full six points bitchier than the average 29-year-old. Truly excellent. I feel better. One question asks, "Are you Canadian, you bitch?" Canadian women are considered bitchier than American women. Surprisingly, Canadian women are more likely to consider themselves successful. Furthermore, women who like the taste of beer are more likely to cheat on their boyfriends. That would be almost every Canadian woman, wouldn't it? I need to grow in bitchiness. For instance, apparently 52% of the women who answered the questionnaire can use a gun (I can't), 51% have been in a catfight (not since I was nine), 50% have cheated in a relationship (ummm), 50% forget birthdays (hopeless), 46% blamed a friend for farting (I blame my dogs), 28% gnawed during oral sex (gross), 36% wear lots of hairspray (only in the '80s) and 24% stomped on someone with high heels (I was drunk so I don't really remember, but probably). I think I'm going to learn to use a gun. I have a friend who shocked me to the soles of my feet last summer by musing on the difficulties she encountered getting her unregistered guns from Toronto to her ranch in B.C. But hey, right- wing women shoot, don't they? I am going to be a bitch with a gun. How un- Canadian is that? As far as I can tell, this full-on Internet celebration of the bitch is mostly a younger-demographic phenomenon, among post-post- post-feminists. Which answers a question I had long puzzled over: Why, when a woman turns 35, does she assume an expression of beneficent kindness? Why does she lose the sharpness in her eyes? Why does she look as if she does crafts with woolly products at home every evening? Now I know a lot of that has to do with raising children, and pretending that it doesn't hurt when your teenaged daughter calls you a fat old cow but, hey, I think it's time to stop. And quite clearly, a little snarling goes a long, long way.

© 2004 Elizabeth Nickson The material at this website is available only for personal non-commercial purposes, and it may not be reproduced without permission.