You're Killing me Smalls!

Ah, Smalls, not to mention, Squints, Yah-Yah, and Repeat – the classic nicknames from one of my favorite sports movies of all times: The Sandlot.

The Sandlot is just one of many films that features unforgettable nicknames. But when I think about all the great nicknames in motion picture history I find it troubling that there is a one group scarcely given nicknames: women. Maybe it the sports film genre or maybe I am being overly feminist, but why can I only remember the male nicknames. This notion has always slipped my mind until my father asked me if girls got nicknames in school, to which my brother interrupted “not like guys do dad.” My brother goes to a all-boys school where pretty much every kid has a nickname, and the majority of the time the guys don’t even know the kids real name. But what about us girls? I graduated from an all-girls high school and believe it or not must of us girls were given nicknames too.

I think the seemingly unimportant issue stems from one of my larger problems with today’s society. In a world where women are now able to hold the same positions as men, we are still considered inferior in many ways. When a male boss is a jerk in the office people pass his behavior off as being “just business” or that he is “in it to win it.” But when a woman acts the same way she is called a bitch. After all of the strides women have made in modern society, why do we still struggle in the professional world? Sure, we are successful but we are always regarded as girly or emotional.

The only solution to this problem in the short term is for women to come together in the workforce instead of fighting amongst each other to get ahead. This is not to say that women shouldn’t aspire to be the leaders of companies but we need to have a conscious attitude of who is treating us unfairly. I think women need to take some advice from comedian/ actress/ writer/ producer/ overall boss woman Tina Fey:

“So, my unsolicited advice to women in the workplace is this. When faced with sexism, or ageism, or lookism, or even really aggressive Buddhism, ask yourself the following question: “Is this person in between me and what I want to do?” If the answer is no, ignore it and move on. Your energy is better used doing your work and outpacing people that way. Then, when you’re in charge, don’t hire the people who were jerky to you.” 

Not only do should we not hire people who were jerks to us in the past, but we should not become jerks ourselves when awarded positions of power.