Polly Vernon
RECENTLY, THE internet got its knickers in a twist over women overusing the phrase ‘no worries if not!’, thereby undermining any attempt to demand things they truly deserve (money, work, consideration, et cetera). I took a moment to contemplate my own occasional deployment of the phrase, then concluded that when I use it, I do so not because I lack confidence as a lady (I don’t), or because I suffer from impostor syndrome (I really don’t. Far from thinking I don’t merit the status, dosh and respect bestowed upon me as a journalist, I actually think I’m wildly underestimated and deserve more)…
No. When I ‘No Worries If Not!’, I do it because I’m English. It’s not my sex that conditions me to come over all snivelling genuflecting pass-agg don’t-mind-little-old-me, every once in a while; it’s my nationality. It’s a gazillion years of the class system and a meticulously regimented queuing instinct and an inability to take the last blue maize tortilla chip from the sharing bowl that make me this way.
But the internet had no truck with my perspective, decreeing instead that No Worries If Not is definitely a feminist issue, and until women learn to quash their urge to apologise for their every want and need, we can have no hope of achieving sexual equality! The heart of the problem (the internet continued) is that, as a gender, women are pathological people pleasers.
I had to stop the internet there, because I do not hold with the notion of ‘people pleasers’. I am definitely not one, and I’ve never met a self-identifying example of the breed that I liked. It is my experience that those who consider themselves people pleasers are the wider cultural equivalent of the job candidate who, during the interview process, answers the question: ‘What is your biggest fault?’ by claiming to be a perfectionist.
She who imagines herself a people pleaser truly believes she’s Just Too Nice For Her Own Good. A veritable slave to kindness! Run ragged, she is, responding to the endless, contradictory needs of everyone else, literally everyone but her poor neglected lovely nicey nice peoplepleasing self !
Now, quite apart from the fact that anyone this invested in the myth of their own selfless exhaustive sweetness is blatantly lying (to themselves, and by extension, you), it’s important to remember that people pleasers stand for nothing, and no one. Their loyalties, views, schedules and perspectives morph to suit those of whoever they’re attempting to people-please next. They’d rather dodge confrontation and be liked, than risk defending a genuine opinion or a genuine friendship, so they don’t bother having any. They’re snakes in meek, martyred, hard-done-by lil’ lambs’ clothing, and they must be stopped! So very many worries if not.