A ‘nice’ girl would rather die than expose herself on TV, but who cares about being ‘nice’ when there are viewing figures to think of? The cleavage is not intended to be seductive but competitive, and it has caught on so fast that nobody feels self-conscious about it. The plunging neckline, once strictly reserved for after six, can be seen on the morning news, the noon news, breaking news, cooking shows and the weather report. Women protesting the establishment stances of male politicians routinely hurl challenges of ‘Man up!’ or ‘Put on your man-pants!’ and even ‘Grow a pair!’ Moreover, they make sure their own pairs are on view when they go on TV. Niceness is the eighth deadly sin for any self-respecting feminist.
The new steak is the glass ceiling that women can’t cut through because they are still too ‘nice’ to ask for a promotion and a raise, and the new shout is, ‘This job doesn’t pay enough! I demand to see the company president!’ Books by female executives have given them their marching orders: stop apologising, remember the new swear word is ‘sorry’, and above all, forget about being ‘nice’.Ībove all, they certainly have done that. When it first hit the fan in the early 1970s I was living in a thin-walled apartment next to a woman who held assertiveness-training workshops that included bloodcurdling shouts of ‘This steak is tough! I demand to see the manager!’ Now, 40 years later, assertiveness is all about careers. How niceness became the eighth deadly sin for women I’ll miss her telegram-like emails, which popped into my inbox every now and then. The Spectator was lucky enough to publish some of her articles in the last few years.
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