Why Nicole Kidman never calls her daughters ‘bossy’

The worldwide fight for equality has had many faces, from Emmeline Pankhurst and Barbara Castle to the UN’s actress ambassador Emma Watson. Nicole Kidman, the Hollywood actress, has revealed she too is doing her bit for feminism, refusing to call her daughters “bossy” in the name of equal opportunities.

Kidman, who has two young daughters as well as two grown-up adopted children, said she preferred to refer to them as “showing leadership skills”, in line with the language used to describe small boys.

“Because there’s a negative connotation to bossy,” she said on Thursday. “You don’t really call boys bossy, so why should we call a girl bossy just 
because she’s showing leadership skills?” She joked: “I have two little Alphas, put it that way. Great leaders.”

Her daughters Sunday and Faith live with her and her husband, the country singer Keith Urban, in Nashville, US.

The term bossy has become something of a controversial description for women in recent years. In 2014, celebrities including Beyonce, Victoria Beckham, Jennifer Garner, the actress, Sheryl Sandberg, the Facebook executive and Condoleeza Rice, the US politician appeared in a video campaign against it, proclaiming it is a negative word used to label ambitious young women.

“I’m not bossy,” Beyonce stated in the video. “I’m the boss.”

Clare Balding, the broadcaster, has also spoken out about it, saying it is among the list of words she classed under “everyday sexism”.

“You come across words all the time that are everyday sexism,” she said in 2012. “I was described as competently bossy and bossily competent by a male journalist and I thought, ‘Gosh, bossy is never used of a man’.

“A man would be called assertive or confident or quick or bright.”

Speaking on Radio 4 Woman’s Hour about her new film Lion, Kidman spoke of parenting her four children: two of whom were adopted during her marriage to Tom Cruise, one a biological child she carried and the fourth a biological child carried by surrogate.

She told the programme: “The one thing I don’t have is a child from a donor egg. I like talking about it because I’m probably one of the few women in the world who has experienced so many different forms of it [motherhood].”

Kidman said parenting each child was “all the same”, adding: “Once the bond is formed, the bond is formed.”

Nashville, she said, allowed her to live a “very, very normal life”, with her two younger daughters in a local school. She has recently been involved with the new-look “untouched” Pirelli calendar, which she said fitted in with her views on empowering women.

“I love that the Pirelli calendar is becoming so much broader in how they perceive women. And that they put Helen Mirren and Charlotte Rampling and myself, and then Alicia Vikander. You know, many different women of different ages in all different forms. “That’s something I’m all about. I was really open to it and really happy with the photos. Something that I like to emphasise as a women is that we all just want to be who we are.

“And sometimes we want to put on all that stuff: we want to put on eye make-up and high heels and jewellery. And then we want to slump around and be completely au naturel. But we want to have the choice and the ability to choose without judgment.

“That’s the important message. The judgment, particularly from other women as well, needs to go away.”

source: GULF NEWS