Sorry Skirt

Whenever you are late for work or for a meeting, do you just say “Sorry, I am late” or do you feel the need to explain yourself? “Sorry, I am late – my son missed his bus today, had to drop him off” or “Sorry, my in-laws arrived today and I started late from home” and so on...

If you do feel the need to explain yourself, you are a “Sorry skirt”. This phenomenon is more noticed in women than in men, though I have noticed men fall prey to this as well – does anybody really care WHY you are late? What everybody cares is about the impact you are having because you are late. So instead of explaining yourself, apologize for the negative impact that you have had.

‘Sorry, I kept you all waiting’ or ‘Sorry, this work is impacted because of me’ or just ‘Sorry, I am late’ with no explanation of the ‘why’ – it is really not needed. But we feel the need to explain because we want to give the message ‘I am really a good person but……’.

Women are seldom able to shed their ‘good girl’ image (for some men it is the 'good boy' image). At school, being obedient was considered an asset, a symbol of model behaviour and girls always want to be held up as a model student/girl.

While growing up, a girl child continuously hears the need to be held up as a respected woman, as a ‘lady’ with proper manners and mesmerizing everybody around without being too loud and most importantly keeping everybody around happy. Have you heard this before?

When this girl child grows into a woman, this behaviour starts reflecting at home, at the work place where the primary focus is on keeping everybody around happy, hunger for positive affirmations, living up to everybody’s expectations, doing deeds and hoping people around notice them.

Have you ever felt “I am doing a great job – as long as I continue to do my job well, I will be appreciated” or “I just need to do my job really well, my boss will take care of me”. If you do, you belong to the “Sorry Skirt” group. Ever stopped to assess, whether your boss is in a position to address your career aspirations? If not, what initiatives are required from you?

I have been told since childhood that it is arrogant to be proud of your achievements, others should notice you and not you yourself alone. What that meant was that you do a great job, feel secretly happy and hope that others notice this great job of yours. It is like doing your homework at school and when the teacher gives an ‘Excellent’ or a ‘Very good’, it is positive affirmation.

Likewise, at work, we expect that we do our job well and hope that our boss notices and gives us an ‘Excellent’ for the job done. There are a few differences though – the job is not our homework, the boss is not the teacher and it is not mandatory for the boss to go through the work we have done and unlike homework, in the work place, a work/project is usually a team effort.

This need for affirmation and perceived as ‘good’ typically continues into the work place where doing everything right as per the books, keeping the boss and everybody around happy becomes paramount and for everything else, we are constantly apologizing. Maybe it is time to ask ourselves – ‘What is it like to be an Unapologetic Woman’?