The queen says that when it comes to her great-grandkids, Charlotte’s in charge.
Queen Elizabeth admitted this week that while Prince George is the eldest, his younger sister Princess Charlotte is the one who calls the shots.
While presenting a ten-year-old girl with a signed copy of the bible at Sandringham on Sunday, the monarch asked the girl whether she looked after her younger sister.
“It’s the other way around!” her mother quipped, according to the Daily Mail.
“It’s like that with Charlotte and George,” the queen replied.
The story has done the rounds online and in newspapers, with a number of outlets stating that Charlotte “bosses” her brother around.
It’s a cute story and, of course, making a toddler out to be domineering is funny because, well, what two-year-old isn’t domineering?
The thing is, though, the word ‘bossy’ is a pretty charged one that many women have a problem with.
Some contend that boys and men are rarely described as ‘bossy’ – instead, they might be called ‘assertive’, a word with far less of a negative connotation – and that girls who are demanding shouldn’t be made to feel bad over it.
“This is a very negative experience for girls,” Sheryl Sandberg, COO at Facebook, said in 2014.
She reckons that if we want girls and women to have the confidence to become leaders, the word should be banned.
“If you look at my childhood, if you look at the childhood of most of the leaders we talked to, they lived through being told they were bossy.”
Sandberg’s call has been echoed by the likes of former US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, Jennifer Garner and Beyoncé, who participated in a video about the word.
I know what you’re going to say – this is PC gone mad. But whether you think banning ‘bossy’ is heavy-handed or fair enough, the language we use is important.
If it’s a word you genuinely reckon you’d use for both boys and girls then fair enough, but if not, it might be time to reconsider.
