The Curse Of The Good Girl By Tonya Crosley's The Power

I apologize too much. This is something that I know about myself. I almost bump into someone, I say sorry. Someone almost bumps into me, I say sorry. I start speaking at the same time as someone else, I say sorry. My dog wants to go outside but there's a literal tornado outside, I say sorry. I've walked into actual inanimate objects and apologized to them. This isn't something that is unique to me. Many women find themselves over-apologizing, so much so that the shampoo company Pantene created a commercial called "Sorry Not Sorry" add centered around the idea and encouraging women to stop needlessly apologizing. Is it wrong that my immediate reaction was to apologize to a company trying to sell me conditioner? Tonya Reiman, author of The Power
One is that women are constantly attempting to avoid seeming offensive or brash and apologize more than men because they have a lower threshold of what they constitute as being offensive (Crosley). Sorry softens the blow - "it's a space filler, a hedge, a way to politely ask for something without offending" (Bennett). The author of The Curse of the Good Girl, Rachel Simmons, expanded on this, "Women know they have to be likeable to get ahead. Apologizing is one way to make yourself more accessible and less threatening. Apologizing is one way of being deemed more likable" (Bennett). Apologizing can be used as a strategy, often unconsciously, to express something without being written off as just a "bitch." It can also mask frustration, like when it's 4:00 AM on a Wednesday morning and your neighbor is still blasting their music; "So sorry, but would you mind turning your music down a little bit?" Sorry can be used in "acts of revolts, expressions of frustration or anger at having to ask for what should be automatic," they can be a "Trojan horse for genuine annoyance, a tactic left over from centuries of having to couch basic demands in palatable packages in order to get what we want" (Crosley). Even in situations where frustration or anger is absolutely justified, women often soften it with an apology. There are many types of excessive apologizing, something I
I put a sticky note on my desk and wrote a note on my phone, "no apologies!!" That didn't work so well. The first few days I made it through the whole day without remembering; "sorry" is such a part of my vocabulary it took a lot of conscious effort for me to cut out. I was very aware of the spaces the "sorry" should be filling; when a friend texted me when I was asleep so they didn't get an immediate response, when gently reminding a partner to work on a group project, when I showed up to meet a friend for dinner on time rather than five minutes earlier when they had gotten there. I kept feeling the compulsion to apologize, and when I didn't it felt odd, as if something was missing. I felt a little guilty, and it definitely heightened my anxiety a bit. I think the anxiety stemmed in part from worrying that I would come off as rude; I found I would much rather seem submissive than people think I was too domineering. Some of the anxious feeling also came from not completing the compulsion to say "sorry;" it felt uncomfortable to not do what I normally