Bitch. Or, perhaps, more provocatively, with the exclamation point: Bitch!
Maybe it’s because the B-word explodes so venomously and satisfyingly off the tongue, but it’s been around for at least 600 years. It’s both a noun and a verb. A bitch can be lewd, malicious, selfish or difficult. Or all four.
A man who is a bitch either performs demeaning tasks for someone else or is in the submissive role in a homosexual prison relationship.
A bitch slap is a blow with an open palm. To bitch is to complain. Men don’t bitch. If a man says another man bitches, it means he’s whining girlishly. It’s a bitch slap to the other guy.
Worldly success gained through soulsucking sacrifice is a "bitch goddess." So is a cold and unattainable woman.
Increasingly women use the salutation "Hey, bitch!" or "Wassup, bitches?" to greet friends. They use it both as a term of empowerment and to denigrate the female competition.
It is a doubled-edged sword. T-shirts with the word "bitch" were printed up to both oppose and support Hillary Clinton in 2008. The former suggests Clinton is unfeminine. The latter declares that she’s tough.
The word your grandmother scrupled not to utter is in the title of two hot new TV comedies: GCB, originally based on a book about backstabbing Texas socialites called Good Christian Bitches and a comedy that started this week, Don't Trust the B—- in Apartment 23 about a 20-something who moves into a New York City apartment and forms an unlikely friendship with her con-artist roommate.
Critics like what they've seen so far.
In a television interview, actress Krysten Ritter, the titular B in the series, shrugged off the anticipated controversy about the B-word.
"And so what? That's fun," Ritter said.
Dawson's Creek star James Van Der Beek, 35, who plays a fictional version of himself, hopes there will be controversy.
"We’re hoping to get picketed by somebody," he said. "If there are people outside the studio with signs that say, 'Don't watch this show. This show is wrong,' then I think we've done something right."
Bitches have gone mainstream. If you are inclined to knit, you can join a stitch-n-bitch for retro fun and indulge in a bitchfest about the annoying people in your life.
You can read the bestselling diet book Skinny Bitch, "a no-nonsense guide for savvy girls who want to stop eating crap and start looking fabulous!" according to its subtitle. Or pick up the lifestyle riposte Shut Up, Skinny Bitches! which, contrariwise, urges women not to be bullied by the forces of fabulousness.
If you live in the U.S., you can buy a bottle of wine called Sassy Bitch, Royal Bitch or Sweet Bitch and a rum cocktail called Jealous Bitch. The labels are a way for a product that is not otherwise notably different from the competition to differentiate itself with sauciness, explained the New York Times.
Wines with names like Sassy Bitch have "grabbed the attention of a certain type of customer, primarily young women en route to a bachelorette or divorce party, or looking for a special way to say ’I love you’ on Mother’s Day."
The B-word has come a long way when a bottle of Sassy Bitch might be deemed appropriate for Mother’s Day.
Sociologist Sherryl Kleinman notes that young women greet each other with "what’s up, bitch?" They use it to mean that they are tough, cool, sexy.
"I think it’s weird, but it’s kind of neat that we’re unique, you know, because we have a reputation for kicking ass and looking good," Kleinman cites one university-aged female rugby player as saying.
"So, it’s kind of fun. It’s like, ’I’m a sexy bitch and I will kick your ass,’ basically," said the young woman.
Women began to seize bitch as a badge of pride in the ’60s, but it meant something much different. In 1968, feminist writer Joreen "Jo" Freeman wrote The BITCH Manifesto.
"BITCH is an organization that does not yet exist. The name is not an acronym. It stands for exactly what it sounds like," wrote Freeman.
To qualify as a bitch, a woman must have all or some of three characteristics, according to Freeman.
First, bitches are aggressive, assertive, perhaps even domineering. "You may not like her, but you cannot ignore her," Freeman says.
Bitches are big, brash and occasionally clumsy. "They clomp up stairs, stride when they walk and don’t worry about where they put their legs when they sit."
Finally, bitches seek identity solely through themselves. "They are independent cusses and believe they are capable of doing anything they damn well want to."
A woman who fulfils all three criteria is a bitch’s bitch. "Only superbitches qualify totally in all three categories and there are very few of those," wrote Freeman. "Most of them don’t last long in this society."
Above all, Freeman’s bitch is never a true woman. Her androgyny is too disturbing to both men and women and life had taught her to distrust other women.
"Bitches who have been mutilated as human beings often turn their fury on other people — particularly other women," she wrote.
By 1995, contrarian feminist Camille Paglia published an essay called Kind of a Bitch: Why I Like Hillary Clinton.
"When Conservatives maligned Hillary Clinton before the election as ’The Lady Macbeth of Little Rock,’ the feminist establishment tried to claim that this was the sort of vulgar, derogatory talk always used by the patriarchy to cut down ambitious and competent women," wrote Paglia.
"I saw that the charge had some truth to it. I like Hillary because she is kind of a bitch."
Two years later in 1997, singer Meredith Brooks scored a huge hit with a song called Bitch (I’m a bitch, I’m a lover/ I’m a child, I’m a mother/ I’m a sinner, I’m a saint/ I do not feel ashamed)
Many DJs preferred to introduce the song as "Nothing in Between" because the B-word was still a hot potato on the airwaves. Bitch peaked at No. 2.
Meanwhile, far from Freeman’s message of go-it-alone independence, the bitch in popular culture has morphed into a girl-power figure, her bitch credibility hanging only on her willingness to call herself one and her girlfriends’ complicity in backing her up on it.
Being a bitch has become a girl group activity. Call it bitch lite.
Rena Bivens, an adjunct professor in women’s and gender studies at Carleton University, notes young women are creating their own language. But like it or not, women are considered to be subordinate to men, and society in general considers their language to be not serious or important. They might call each other bitches playfully or to claim empowerment, but that’s not the way it’s understood.
"Women are still connected to the power dynamics. We still think of the roots of a word, even if it is used positively," Bivens says.
"You can do whatever you want with language and words, but that doesn’t mean other people will understand the meaning. These other meanings are still there.
"Language might be twisted. But there is still that hint, that ghost or spectre still hiding behind the word."
Kleinman, a professor of sociology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, says women cannot reclaim a term that was never theirs.
"The idea of reclaiming implies that women owned this term, it was then co-opted by men, and now women want it back," says Kleinman, who was the lead author on a paper called Reclaiming Critical Analysis: the Social Harms of ’Bitch’ in the journal Sociological Analysis.
"I consider women using terms like bitch as an example of false power. It makes women feel good to use it, but it still reinforces the association of a negative term (Bitch!) with women. It also gives licence for men to use it; they can tell themselves, ’Well, the term must be OK because women use it.’ "
Women, especially young women, have also come to use "chick," "slut," and "ho" to describe other women. Again, women may feel they are cool in using the very terms men have used — and still use — to put down women, says Kleinman.
"I think women find them cool because they are terms used by men. But as with ’bitch,’ it gives men licence to use the terms. That’s why I think Slutwalk was a bad name for the demonstrations that have taken place across the globe. What happened to TakeBack the Night, which was organized by women to point out that women should be able to walk the streets without fear of sexual assault by men? There are still such marches in some places, but Slutwalk was a lot more popular."
Kleinman questions why, if women want to use a word for themselves that challenges, they don’t choose the word "feminist."
The B-word still carries a sting, and it is still an effective way for a man to shut down a woman.
Here’s a much-publicized example: Courtney Love, in a spat with former Nirvana drummer Dave Grohl of the Foo Fighters, said Grohl "hit on me so many times. He’s just a conflicted guy about me, which is why he continually writes songs about me to hear he hates me more than anyone else."
Here’s what Grohl said about Love: "She’s an ugly f—— bitch."
Ouch. Is it even possible to reclaim the word? That’s up for debate, Bivens says.
There’s the question of who, exactly, can use the B-word in a positive way. If it’s only attractive heterosexual women who are able to take these risks, then other people don’t have the same privilege. It might work for Meredith Brooks and Krysten Ritter, but not for all women.
"The word ’bitch’ is naturally gendered because of its roots. People are restricted about how to perform their gender role. It restricts women’s roles, even if it is used in a positive way," says Bivens.
"Use of it in the media reproduces that tired old power dynamic that is at the heart of so many problems."
Bivens says it all comes down to choice. She avoids telling people what to do.
"If bitch works for you, then fine."
The bitch timeline
The term "bitch" is used in an unflattering way to refer to women. It is believed to have its roots in the old English "bicce" and the Norse "bikkje," meaning "female dog." Some believe the term was used in early Christian Europe to demean pagan followers of the goddess Diana, who was often portrayed as a huntress in the company of dogs. Hence the insult "son of a bitch."
The B-word is notable by its absence in the plays of Shakespeare, despite his genius with invective and his skill in creating some of the most memorable bitches in literature: Lady Macbeth (ambitious bitch); Goneril and Regan (self-serving bitches); and Kate the shrew (won’t-suffer-fools-gladly bitch) Shakespeare’s rare uses of bitch are aimed at men, denigrating them as sons of bitches, as in this string of insults from the Earl of Kent to Oswald in King Lear: "knave, beggar, coward, pander and son and heir of a mongrel bitch."
In A Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, lexicographer Francis Grose defines bitch as it refers to women: "The most offensive appellation that can be given an English woman, even more provoking than whore; as may be gathered from the regular Billingsgate or St. Giles answer: ’I may be a whore, but can’t be a bitch.’
"Bitch" is considered so offensive that a female canine is politely called a "lady dog" or "dogess."
The B-word is used more frequently. Some scholars believe it is a reaction to women’s suffrage.
1940s and ’50s
A knitting group is known as a "stitch-n-bitch." The term is resurrected in 2000 and becomes a pop-culture phenomenon after Debbie Stoller starts a knitting group and writes an article about it in BUST magazine.
Feminist academic and writer Joreen "Jo" Freeman writes The BITCH Manifesto, describing the bitch as tough, assertive and competent, but also an eternal outsider in the worlds of both men and women:
"Most women feel both better than and jealous of bitches. While convincing themselves that they are not like these aggressive, masculine freaks, they have a sneaking suspicion that perhaps men, the most important thing in their lives, do find the freer, more assertive, independent bitch preferable as a woman."
Bitch magazine is published. In explaining the name, the magazines’s editors cite writer Rebecca West: "People call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat.”
“We’d argue that the word ’bitch’ is usually deployed for the same purpose. When it’s being used as an insult, ’bitch’ is an epithet hurled at women who speak their minds, who have opinions and don’t shy away from expressing them, and who don’t sit by and smile uncomfortably if they’re bothered or offended. If being an outspoken woman means being a bitch, we’ll take that as a compliment."
Singer Meredith Brooks releases Bitch.
I’m a bitch, I’m a lover/ I’m a child, I’m a mother/ I’m a sinner, I’m a saint/ I do not feel ashamed/ I’m your hell, I’m your dream/ I am nothing in between/ You know you wouldn’t want it any other way/ So take me as I am/ This may mean you’ll have to be a stronger man.
The song is a hit.
Elizabeth Wurtzel publishes Bitch: In Praise of Difficult Women.
Among the women she praises for flouting the rules and paying the consequences: the Biblical temptress Delilah and poet Sylvia Plath. On the cover, a bare-breasted Wurtzel glances sideways at the camera, holding up her middle finger.
After references to Hillary Clinton as a bitch, Tina Fey calls herself a bitch on Saturday Night Live:
"You know what, bitches get stuff done. That’s why Catholic schools uses nuns as teachers and not priests. Those nuns are mean old clams and they sleep in cots and they’re allowed to hit you. And at the end of the year, you hated those bitches but you knew the capital of Vermont."
Elizabeth Wurtzel reflects on losing beauty in a magazine article called "Aging is a Bitch."
In March, ABC debuts GCB — originally titled Good Christian Bitches, the name was changed after Christian groups objected — a comedy-drama about a high school "queen bitch" who returns to her hometown to make amends after her husband dies in the midst of a pyramid scheme scandal.
This week, ABC debuted Don't Trust the B—- in Apartment 23, a comedy about a trusting young woman who moves into the apartment of a party girl scam artist.