Bitch For A Week

Novelist Marlowe Granados documents her special week as a bitch with Language Arts.

“The general atmosphere is very Macbeth-ish, what has or is about to happen?” So goes the cue for Bette Davis in All About Eve to down her martini and cut through the party with venom and splendour. “Fasten your seatbelts,” she famously declares. “It’s going to be a bumpy night.” Davis radiates the kind of crackle I always want to have, and those who know me agree—I love nothing more than a bumpy night. Amateurs chalk it up to a love of drama, but no. As I get older, I want to be formidable, unvarnished—a force to be reckoned with. 

As Elizabeth Wurtzel writes in her book Bitch: In Praise of Difficult Women, “Even if we act like good girls, the world is still quite likely to find us bad. So to hell with dignity.” When people see a woman step outside of social codes and be even a little forthright, they’re tempted to use that five-letter word. 

When I was initially approached with the challenge of being “a bitch for a week” my response was, “I honestly don’t know what difference that would make.” Speaking my mind has always landed me on the bitchier side of the coin and I’m known for not mincing my words (Apparently, my tone is also a problem). 

“Well, we’re literally giving you license to do it,” my editor pointed out. I’ll admit when I feel prickly, I do still preface whatever venom with, “Sorry to be a bitch but…” This experiment was about fully embracing the title without disclaimer. Maybe it would be freeing? I accepted without much hesitation because honestly, it would be funny.

Now, what exactly is a bitch? Frank, undeterred, probably brunette. The Betty and Veronica of it all. Though I’m sure many have put me in the category and I’m partial to a maligned female archetype, I have never stopped to fully parse it out. People often mistake bitchiness as a feminine kind of cruelty. 

I disagree. I think it’s what happens when you shed the niceties that have been ingrained in you. Women are often tasked as being the arbiters of social gatherings, mediating the temperature and acquiescing to stronger, louder personalities. In these scenes, men are often shameless and free to misbehave without consequence. If a little remark can get them to straighten up their backs, I don’t see a problem with it. Why not trim a few egos?

I called my best friend to discuss how I could approach it. He laughed and said, “It’ll be more like a food diary.” Implying that for me, being a bitch is all part of a nourishing diet. It is essential to my run of show. Now, instead of passing through social circumstances without acknowledgement, I would take note of all my remarks that could be interpreted as bitchy. 

I set a few guiding principles for myself. I would not be any flavor of mean to service workers or other innocent passersby. I would only punch up, or if pushed, punch across to those in the same weight class. Wurtzel writes, “We want to use our powers of persuasion to do evil to those who deserve our evil.” It’s vigilantism, really—a public service. 

Conveniently I was going to be in New York, and if any city could handle it, it would be there. Admittedly the last time I was in town me and my friends were shushed at Fanelli in Soho. “We teach girls to shrink themselves, to make themselves smaller,” my friend recited, while I pronounced that New York was dead. Of course, we all burst out laughing. Perhaps an unwitting precursor to Bitch Week. 

On my first night of the experiment, a filmmaker turned to me at a party after hours of conversation and asked, “Are you happy?” Upon telling this story, my friends all held their breath knowing his question would not go unpunished. Without missing a beat I said, “Are you trying to find deep wells of sadness in my eyes?” He doubled down, “You just seem sad.” I suddenly became very still, and my tone shifted to what could only be described as ferocious, “Sometimes on my very worst days I burst out laughing thinking about how fun my life is.” 

“To excel at bitchiness is to never second guess yourself. A bitch asks for what she wants — not if she deserves it.”

In Caroline Blackwood’s The Stepdaughter, the protagonist narrows in on her husband’s child with stinging rage and says, “She made me feel far too feline.” When I throw out a snide remark it can feel like a sharpening of claws. A concealed weapon that goes sheathed unless called for. Deep down you really want to say something, and being a bitch is having the courage to. To excel at bitchiness is to never second guess yourself. A bitch asks for what she wants, and not if she deserves it. 

The next day while trying to arrange my evening, a paramour was late on getting back to me. I texted him, “If you don’t confirm, you’ll have to get to the back of the line.” He hastily made a dinner reservation. The next morning, I vaguely remember the outlines of an argument. He reminded me, “Yes, you told me to leave my own apartment.” I commended him for taking it on the chin. A man who can’t intellectually tussle without getting mad isn’t worth his weight in salt. 

I had decided to place my Bitch Week around my trip because there was one event I thought would benefit from the delights of such attitude. The pièce de résistance. I was invited to attend a fundraising gala for a downtown magazine that is known for being politically dubious in the boring, downtown “anti-woke” way. The night before, someone said to me, “I just don’t know how I could eat their canapés while disagreeing with their politics.” If he had read my book, I told him, he would understand it was possible. Someone needed to make the general atmosphere Macbeth-ish and it was going to be me. 

Two friends and I set out on the train to the party from Grand Central, wearing all white in accordance with the dress code printed on the invitation. In order to make a splash you must be good at hiding in plain sight. Once we stepped out in Westport, Connecticut I clapped my hands together, “I can’t wait to chirp everyone.” My more good-natured friend put on her sunglasses, “No Marlowe, you’re being so scary.” 

I have never been a fan of literary parties, and I do not get along with people who self-describe as “chronically online.” As long as I had my friends around me, we would persevere. The photographer kept trying to take our photo, which we later told him to please delete. The gala was to award a writer of self-published fiction who is known for writing disgusting, misogynist prose under a pseudonym. On the train, my friend read some of what was available online with her eyes wide, “But have you seen this?” I told her to close the tab as she was better off not poisoning her mind. 

Given that we were at an estate with terrible cell service, we were pre-emptively placing ourselves as “Final Girls” in what could soon be a horror scenario. We spent much of the event playing a game in which I asked everyone if me and my friends were murderesses, who would be responsible for what. Everyone correctly guessed it would be me doing the actual crime. The owner of the house had taken to occasionally petting me on my head like I was a diminutive novelty. Since no one had placed seats for us at the dinner table and we were told not to eat the appetizers, we took the fried clams anyway and popped them in our mouths while throwing the shells back on the platter.

I wholly disavowed many of the guests in attendance (reactionary podcasters, lazy provocateurs, Twitter personalities), whether that be with how they present themselves or what kind of politics they encourage. To be reactionary without ever saying it with your chest is a much graver insult, because it’s not even brave. If we’re talking about being a bitch, at least I truly go through the world that way instead of hiding behind it as some paltry aesthetic. I don’t care if someone is nice in person if their notoriety is built on regressive politics. My distaste of the crowd allowed me to freely throw bitchy remarks such as, “No one here will ever know what it is like to grow up beautiful.” 

The next night a friend asked if I had a chance to speak to the evening’s honoree at the gala. I said no. My good-natured friend interrupted, “Are you joking? You said—hypothetically—if you had to murder anyone it would be him, and when he asked for your name, you did a little shrug and said, ‘Ask around.’” I had conjured Lady Macbeth so completely that I’d forgotten all about it. 

“It felt like stripping off the lacquer of feminine codes to reveal something sharper, daring, and honest. It is the best kind of mischief a woman can get into.”

After my week sojourn, I realized it wasn’t possible to perform bitchiness, as a performance is to put something on. Thinking that after the fact, this would come out and people would breathe a sigh of relief. 

“It was an act” is something I am not interested in. In reality, it felt like stripping off the lacquer of feminine codes to reveal something sharper, daring, and honest. It is the best kind of mischief a woman can get into. 

On the topic of being a bitch, Feminist scholar Gina Barreca says, “Power is the ability not to have to please.” That was really what I was hungry for. The privilege of being a bitch is to forgo the pampering of those around her. When someone asks, “how dare she?” — she’s doing it right. 

It’s not particularly noble to be quiet and behave. As Wurtzel writes, “there is no point in being good and suffering in silence.” The world is always trying to curtail women, so why would I start by selling myself short? In hearing my stories, my friends are inspired to be a little bolder, too. We huddle together composing zingers in response to bad behaviour simply because the offending parties should know. 

People bristle at the idea of a woman doing what she wants, especially if it’s at the expense of a man’s ego. To that I say, come a little closer and see if I bite.