“Sorry!”
This is what I say to people who bump into me on the sidewalk, people who have accidentally picked up my drink instead of theirs (“Oh, that’s mine, sorry”), to anyone who opens a door right as I’m about to walk through it, to waiters at restaurants that have accidentally messed up my order.
It’s a lot. And you might say it diminishes the meaning and impact of “sorry” every time.
In this article about the shortage of oat milk, of all things, the author recounts becoming flustered and apologizing twice after asking for something that’s perfectly reasonable to ask for (in Brooklyn, at least.) The issue of over-apologizing has become so ubiquitous that even the dictionary put out a video about it.
I’d like to take a leaf from the book of Never Not Collective, a media production company started by four climbers and filmmakers who describe themselves as “unapologetic women of the outdoors.”
Let me clarify my own interpretation of this word I love: unapologetic. Being unapologetic doesn’t mean you never apologize. Being unapologetic means you don’t apologize for things you shouldn’t be apologizing for. It’s as simple as that.
Well, really, it’s not as simple as that in practice, because it’s so easy to slip into saying “sorry” and feeling bad about perfectly reasonable actions you’ve taken. Science suggests that women apologize more than men, mostly because societal pressure has led us to become “fluent in apologease.”
I’ll give you a great example from Pheobe Robinson’s latest book, Everything’s Trash, But It’s Okay.
In a chapter titled “LOL. Wut?: An Incomplete List of All the Ways Being a Woman is Ridic” (this should give you a sense of Pheobe’s style), she writes about how she ordered an Uber messenger to drop a package off at her home. Though the messenger knew exactly where he was bringing the package and thus, theoretically, should have been aware how long the trip would take, for some reason his first action upon arriving on Pheobe’s doorstep was to complain multiple times about how far the trip was.
Phoebe’s response was what you might expect if you’ve read this far:
“Not only did I apologize to him three times, but I could tell by the way he was pausing and staring at me that he was expecting an apology….Even though I did nothing wrong, it was my fault. He knew his starting point as well as my address and still took the job, but again, it doesn’t matter. It was my fault. And apparently, I agreed with him.”
Cut to: me a few weeks ago, asking my boyfriend if it would be OK for me to send an email ending a possible writing opportunity I really wasn’t excited about.
“I feel bad!” I say, shamed by the fact that I was the one who reached out to this writing contact in the first place. Obviously, this fact obligates me to serve the rest of my life indentured to this person with whom I have zero binding agreements.
It is at this point, after my boyfriend talks me down with strategies like “logic” and pointing out that I actually don’t owe this person anything, that I realize I have a problem.
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Different explanations for why women seem to say “sorry” more freely than men on the whole include that women feel the need to come across as unobtrusive in order to be liked or respected; or, as Sloane Crosley writes, apologies “are employed when a situation is so clearly not our fault that we think the apology will serve as a prompt for the person who should be apologizing.”
If you can think of a time when either of these reasonings has actually improved any situation, ever, in the history of the universe, please let me know.
At the same time, I don’t think resolving this apology problem should lay squarely on the shoulders of women. This Entrepreneur article suggests a few alternatives to apologizing in the workplace where an apology is needed, as well as how to genuinely apologize when it’s called for.
However, it’s already been documented that when women behave like men, especially at work, they’re perceived as being bossy. Sure, I want to stop apologizing unnecessarily all the time, but will the people around me no longer see me as nice?
Might they think of me as – gasp! – mean???
Your first thought might be, who cares? And you would be right – normally, I’m a proponent of not caring what other people outside of your friends and family think about you. But in the context of work, whether you’re in an office from 9-5 or out in the freelance jungle, what other people think of you does matter for your career prospects.
And why should it be up to any woman to juggle being just perfectly apologetic and enough of a team player with, I don’t know, acting like herself and getting things done?
So if you need me, I’ll be working on stopping myself from over-apologizing. But we, as a society, also need to start calling out the culture that creates that feeling of needing to apologize, especially in women.
Both men and women contribute to that culture by judging women more harshly than is warranted, and if we start pointing out all the ways we encounter this misbalance in our everyday lives, maybe the people around us will take notice and do the same.
So be unapologetic, encourage women in your life to follow suit, and support them when they do.
The next time someone hockey checks me on the sidewalk? Don’t expect anything but side-eye.