What Happened to Me When I Replaced “I’m Sorry” With “I’m Sexy”
An experiment in exchanging regret for your presence for pride in it.
What does it actually mean to apologize? In the best of all worlds, it means to take responsibility; to own when you’ve done something wrong, and to start making reparation; to understand that you’ve caused hurt or inconvenience.
Ideally, this ownership of feeling and understanding of where you’ve gone wrong happens as an even exchange. A true understanding of where each person has gone wrong, and a movement towards healing.
What happens, though, when one half of the population is pushed to beg forgiveness not just for the things they do wrong, but for the space they take? The air they breathe? The shape of their bodies, the way they walk, the sound of their voices… the list is endless. What happens to that group when forty percent of the words they speak are making up for the fact that they simply exist?
At the beginning of the year, I was talking to my brilliant friend Britt at work at the pole dance studio where we used to work about a vacation or a film that we’d watched recently…I can’t quite remember. I stumbled over a statement.
“Oh, sorry!” I said to Britt.
“Why?”
“What?”
“Why are you sorry?”
At that question, I stopped to breathe from my belly up. Why WAS I sorry?
“I’m not trying to criticize you, but you do apologize a lot. Like, even more than the average woman.”
That hit hard, given how much I witness women apologize every single day. Hell, I’ve even made it into a policy of mine that when I work with clients, I refuse to let them apologize for the questions they want to ask me before I start pulling their cards.
“Do me a favor, and from now on, every time you’re about to say ‘I’m sorry,’ say ‘I’m sexy’ instead.”
I must confess that I laughed. It just sounded so outrageous.
“Are you serious?”
“As a heart attack. Next time you feel the need to apologize to someone in this room for something that’s not your fault — because you probably will before you leave today — substitute it with “I’m sexy.” Say it to everyone, in every situation.”
I stared at her. “Okay, if you say so.”
I took it with a grain of salt, but Britt is a genius of a creatrix who breathes life into all things, so I was going to trust her on this.
Later, as I was changing the bottle on our work water cooler, I tripped under the weight of the massive five-gallon Sparklett’s bottle and made some noise. I blurted, “Sorry, sorry!”
Britt responded, quick as a whip, “Wait…what are you?”
It took me a second, but after a moment I grinned and said, “I’m sexy.”
At that moment, I swear that I felt more powerful. I lifted my head and my body formed the natural S-shaped curve of a confident woman. And through the rest of the day, every time I had the desire to apologize for things that I didn’t actually need to take responsibility for, I did indeed say “I’m sexy;” and every time I said it, Britt responded by saying “Yeah you are!”
By the time I left work, I was definitely feeling more confident. I went to say goodbye to Britt and on hugging her I said, without feeling the need to apologize, “I’m sexy!”
The crazy thing is that I actually believed it.
Now, did I actually start saying “I’m sexy” in EVERY situation where I felt the tendency to apologize? No, not even close. But even when I didn’t say it out loud, I would always think it to myself…and the power of that conscious thought began to work on my confidence.
Whenever that tendency to apologize for nothing — literally nothing — I would catch myself right before the words hit my tongue, replace ‘sorry’ with ‘sexy’, and think about how funny that might sound if I said it out loud. But I would, invariably, end up thinking “I’m sexy,” and that thought — especially when repeated the way it was — ended up doing wonders for my self-esteem.
The magic wasn’t just in my spoken communication, but in my written correspondence as well. I began to write my emails and letters with expressions of gratitude rather than apology, and it led me to yet another important realization beyond my own inherent sexiness: when I acknowledged the time and effort of others by saying “thank you,” it immediately set a more positive tone than saying “I’m sorry.”
I might have felt bad about having done or not done something, but if they hadn’t felt insulted/put upon by my actions, what damage was I doing by insinuating that they should? Rather, by saying “thank you,” I was actually saying “I see the time you’re taking and the fact that you’ve shown up. I appreciate the fact that you’re a rock star.”
I definitely said it around my friends, though, and it prompted a lot of double-takes.
When I explained my new practice, though, a lot of my friends looked at me with wide eyes, a slow, mischievous smile, and a brand-new resolve. Soon enough, they were replacing their sorry attitudes with sexy ones as well (not to say that there was anything wrong with them per sé- they just literally said “sorry” A LOT).
The two times I went away with groups of women to get away from the city, I explained the practice and it became the mantra of the weekend, with some women arbitrarily blurting out “I’m sexy!” in the middle of Joshua Tree and a chorus of voices responding “Yeah you are!” in return.
Being a person with clinical depression who’s had a lot of crazy shit happen to her, I typically go to my friends to vent about it.
Having had it drilled into my head from a young age that people don’t like being around negativity, and that I should keep my dark feelings and experiences to myself, I feel a visceral need to preface every instance of confiding in my friends with an apology, and following that apology up with yet more for the fact that I keep bringing this stuff to them.
Now, they have never once made me feel guilty about my coming to them with a problem, but I feel horrible about having put my problems onto them.
On the other hand, though, one of the things I’d been most guilty of lecturing my friends against that I was most guilty of apologizing for was the space I take up in the lives of people who conscientiously hold space for me.
This is one of the stupidest arguments my friends and I have, and we have it OFTEN. Just the other day, my roomie apologized for taking me up on my offer to help her move stuff in her storage unit. After I warmly told her that her apology was a moot point, given the fact that I’d OFFERED, I then proceeded to apologize to her and the other friend we were with for the mood I was in. They both looked at me like I’d grown an extra head and said. “Amy, if we didn’t love you anyway, we’d be horrible friends.”
Now, am I a proponent of pulling a Trump and simply never apologizing for ANYTHING? Of course not. But I do believe that when apologies are conserved for rarer use and for the benefit of the recipient in addition to the apologist, they do end up meaning more. And when every action that women take is accompanied by an apology, it ends up making those apologies mean less.
In my experience, one of the reasons why women apologize so much is because, in part, men rarely feel like they need to.
My favorite non-apology is “I’m sorry if anyone was offended by…” which is a fancy way of saying “your reaction is your problem, so I’m just going to keep doing what I’m doing.” This is just gaslighting, and I would rather you not apologize at all than do it; it might make you think it shows you in a better light for saying sorry AND standing by your words, but really it just makes you look like an indecisive jerk who has no regard for the sensibilities of others.
I’d like to leave off by saying that as I’ve gotten older, I’ve learned that the people who want to be in your life will be in your life: an illness or injury or negative mood won’t scare them away, but attitude will bring them closer.
Don’t apologize to your friends or family for taking up their space — when you are loved, and boundaries are good, they will tell you if they need it.
And if they have the capacity for it, take up the space they offer. There’s a reason they’re offering it.
If you do something wrong, apologize, and profusely. Ask to learn about why you’ve caused the offense you have and promise to learn and grow from the experience. Do better, and try not to stagnate. But if you haven’t, shrug it off, stick your butt out and say to yourself, “I’m sexy!”