Ladies Don't Cause a Scene. They Apologize for Other People's Behavior.

In this episode of That's Not Very Ladylike, here's a fun little lie we've all been sold: that a good woman keeps the peace. She smooths it over, she doesn't make it weird, and she absolutely does not cause a scene. Meanwhile she's apologizing to the guy who bumped into her, cleaning up a comment that was never hers to clean up, saying sorry so many times a day she's stopped hearing herself do it. So which is it?

In this episode I get into what's actually going on: how girls get trained to manage everyone else's feelings as a full-time job, why that reflexive sorry is a nervous system stuck in appease mode and not actually politeness, and what it quietly costs your body to swallow your own reactions for years so nobody around you has to feel one second of discomfort. It's not that you're so easygoing. It's that somewhere along the way you learned keeping the peace was safer than taking up space. Let's talk about it.

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What is That's Not Very Ladylike?

That’s Not Very Ladylike is the podcast for every woman who was told to be polite, stay calm, or stop being so dramatic, meanwhile her hormones, boundaries, and sanity were quietly falling apart.

Hosted by Tracey Willingham, licensed social worker and the voice behind That Hormone Girl™, each episode starts with one rule: Ladies don’t…and then they do it anyway.

Together, we unpack the unspoken expectations, the emotional labor, the generational BS, and the hormone chaos modern women are carrying and we get honest about what it actually takes to feel like yourself again.

If you’re ready to question the rules, trust your body, and stop shrinking to make everyone else comfortable, you’re in the right place.

Tracey: 00:13

You're listening to That's Not Very Ladylike, the show where every week, we start with one rule, ladies don't, and then we do it anyway. Welcome to That's Not Very Ladylike. Today's episode is brought to you by every time you've said sorry to a piece of furniture that you've walked into. Buckle up, and let's jump in. So here's the rule we're looking at this episode.

Tracey: 01:03

Whatever happens in the room, your job is to keep it smooth. Somebody's rude, you overexplain it to soften it. Somebody crosses a line, you laugh it off so nobody feels awkward. A man raises his voice, and somehow you're the one who ends up saying sorry for his volume. Ladies don't cause scenes.

Tracey: 01:31

We absorb them. We've turned ourselves into the human shock absorber for everyone else's bad behavior. And then we call it being easy to be around. And the part that really just irritates my ass is the exact same behavior that gets a man called a leader gets ladies called a problem. So today, we are getting into it.

Tracey: 01:59

So gather around. It's story time, one of my favorite times. And I wanna tell you about the time that I caused a scene, and I mean a real one, and it was on purpose. And I would do it again tomorrow with my whole being put into it. No no regrets.

Tracey: 02:19

So I was part of a group, and I had some big feelings. And people, I'm going to say 75%, were happy I was in this role and agreed with what I did. 25% made it their mission to try to sabotage me, spread rumors. It caused problems with businesses and individuals that this group was trying to interact with all because I didn't fit a mold, a story, an idea that they thought this leadership role should hold. So because the people with the titles, the leadership, the committee, the folks who were supposed to be steering the ship, the ones who had done it before and were supposed to be mentors, they got something wrong.

Tracey: 03:08

And it wasn't a we disagree about the budget wrong. I'm talking about wrong in a way that hurt a person who they supposedly loved so very much, and we ended up losing them not too long after this. And their last memories were not attending something to stick it to me and my partner. And really what ended up doing is is they ended up hurting their friend in the last little bit of time that they had left here on this planet. And after that, probably about a month later, we had our monthly meeting.

Tracey: 03:46

And the whole room turned into a, I can't believe they're gone. I can't believe we have to carry on this event in their memory. You know, we've got to show up. And I sat there and I just felt my heart rate going up. I felt my blood pressure going up.

Tracey: 04:03

And I couldn't take another minute because I thought, how dare you? How dare you do this to a friend and then sit here in the same space and act like it was just you were busy. You couldn't make it. You had other plans. You intentionally hurt a friend to try to stick it to me and my whole body lit up because some part of me already knew I was not going to be able to smile and let this one go.

Tracey: 04:34

And so I didn't. And after the meeting ended, I stayed. And I talked to person after person after person, not only about where we saw things differently, but I shared my disappointment and my frustration in how they treated their friend. I also talked about why I was not going to just file out of that room like nothing had happened, why I wasn't going to just sit there and let this injustice and disrespect happen. Now, my husband, he pulled up a chair, him and a couple of friends basically grabbed the popcorn and settled in to watch from across the room like it was pay per view.

Tracey: 05:16

And they really were having the time of their lives. They were loving it. But the thing was, all year I had tried to be diplomatic. I had tried to be relational. I had tried to be respectful when I was met with disrespect after disrespect.

Tracey: 05:31

And finally, I thought, Why does everybody else get to act like an ass and I don't get a moment to say what I want to say? And then came the reviews as I was meeting with individuals. Because for women, there are always reviews. People told me it wasn't graceful. I was not acting kind.

Tracey: 05:52

And you already know the word that was coming. They told me I was not being ladylike. And here's what I need you to sit with because sometimes you have to make a damn scene. Sometimes the scene is the whole point because the scene is what catches the attention. And the attention is what finally turns something into action.

Tracey: 06:15

Quiet was not going to fix this situation. Polite was not welcome in the room. Me being graceful would have let every single person walk out of that room and conveniently forget that someone, and actually a lot of someones, they got hurt. But here's the part that still gets under my skin. When a man does the exact same thing, which it did happen a few weeks later, did the same thing as me, and I meant stayed late, speaks with conviction, refuses to drop it, tells a room of people why they're wrong, He was given accolades like he's a leader.

Tracey: 06:58

Look at him using his voice. Look at him mentoring. The future needs to follow what he's doing. He's passionate. Boy, that is instructive, is it not?

Tracey: 07:08

That's how you show people the way to go. Yet when I did it just a few weeks before, I was causing a scene. Same conviction, same room, same backbone, different anatomy, totally different name tag, and I am done pretending and not talking about it publicly that I didn't notice the difference. So there's always a cost to the rules that are put on the ladylike. So there's a stress response most people have never even heard of.

Tracey: 07:42

So we all know fight, flight, and freeze. But there's actually a forgotten fourth one, and it's called F. N. Appease the threat. Manage it.

Tracey: 07:54

Make yourself so pleasant and so useful that it doesn't turn on you. And there is a body based version of this that researchers call tend and befriend. So under threat, instead of throwing hands or running for the door, you tend to everyone and you smooth the social fabric. And honestly, it is genius. It's kept generations of women physically alive.

Tracey: 08:23

But run that program twenty four hours a day in every meeting, every dinner, every group text, and you become a woman who can diffuse a room in three seconds flat and cannot find her own anger with a map and a flashlight. You've been so busy babysitting the temperature that you forgot that you get to be a person in that room and not always the thermostat. So, you know, we've always got to look at how deep does this go? What's the history? How did we get here with this rule of the ladylike?

Tracey: 08:59

So, let's talk about the double standard because it is not in your head. Women apologize more than men. And one well known study found it's not because we are sorrier than men. It's that we have a lower bar for what we even count as offense worth apologizing for. So we were trained to scan ourselves for wrongdoings around the clock, even when the wrongdoings belong to somebody else entirely.

Tracey: 09:33

And then watch what happens to the same exact behavior. A man interrupts, he's decisive. A woman interrupts, she's abrasive. A man holds the floor and won't back down, that is a strong leader. A woman does it, well, she's being difficult, emotional, She's making a scene.

Tracey: 09:56

Look at the research on performance reviews sometimes. The word abrasive shows up for women constantly and almost never for men doing the identical thing. It's one action wearing two different name tags. And they handed us the ridiculous one. And that's the bullshit, and we get to say so.

Tracey: 10:20

So for a lot of women, staying quiet, it's a sharp, accurate read on what speaking up is going to cost them. And that's a system rigged so the safest move is often operated from silence. So if we follow this ladylike rule, and it was said out loud, this is what it sounds like in a room. Sorry, said to the person who stepped on your foot. He's just like that.

Tracey: 10:55

Don't worry about it. Covering up for a grown man. I didn't want to make it weird, so I just let it go. If I were a man right now, you'd be calling this leadership. I keep the peace so well that nobody actually notices that there isn't any peace.

Tracey: 11:20

So we're going to look at my favorite segment, which is this should piss you off because. Because I do. I have a lot of rage. I have a lot of frustration about a lot of things that are put on ladies. So this should piss you off because you have been doing unpaid emotional cleanup for people who have never once, not for a single second, worried about your comfort.

Tracey: 11:46

You apologized for their volume, their rudeness, their flat out inability to act right. And they walked away thinking, You were lovely, while you walked away with knots in your stomach. And the scene a lot of times is never ours. You just keep agreeing to carry it. So here's the thing that should light you all the way up to your core.

Tracey: 12:19

The woman who never makes a fuss gets praised for the exact same silence that's quietly eating her alive. Meanwhile, the guy across the table doing half of what you're capable of gets a leadership award for speaking his mind. So they end up taking your voice, you get slapped with a tantrum label, and then handed your job description to a man who'd do it louder and get a round of applause. And that's the whole damn con. They are running a con on us, ladies.

Tracey: 13:04

So how do you know if this is you? I mean, most of the time we would say if you're feeling like hot, like I'm going to scream or you're like, Oh gosh, is she like listening into my or is she reading my group text? But just in case you're like, I don't know, maybe this could be me. This is how you would know. You apologize when someone bumps into you.

Tracey: 13:26

You apologize for just walking up the stairs as if you took up the entire staircase instead of just walking on the one side that everyone else is using. You replay confrontations and rewrite them so you come off nicer. You feel a room's tension shift before anyone speaks, and you move to fix it on instinct. You've covered for someone else's bad behavior to a third party who actually deserved the truth. You used this load bearing sentence in your life.

Tracey: 14:08

I don't want to make it a thing. And most likely, you've watched a man get praised for behavior that would have gotten you called ridiculous, emotional, dramatic, and you said nothing. So the reflection, how do we shift this? How do we change this? Let's look at our reflection of what can we try this week.

Tracey: 14:32

So the practice this week is not go cause a scene at brunch. Although, you know, live your life. If I'm at that same brunch, I'm going to cheer you on. I'm going to give you the slow Disney clap and be like, Yeah, I heard her. Did you hear her?

Tracey: 14:47

But I want you to think about a step maybe if you're like, I'm not ready for the Disney clap yet, Tracy. So let's go with one that's quieter and maybe even a little braver than that. The next time the apology starts to rise in your throat for something that is not yours to own, hold it. Hold it for one second and don't say it. And let that silence get a little awkward.

Tracey: 15:13

You're going to have to lean into that awkward. Let it go. Let the discomfort go sit with the person who actually earned it. And you don't have to throw hands. You just have to stop volunteering to carry what was never yours to begin with.

Tracey: 15:34

And if you decide a thing is worth a scene, make it a good one. We are allowed to make a scene. We are allowed to have a voice, and there are times where righteous anger is welcome and needed to move the society, the person, anything, the situation forward. Some things deserve a scene. Mine did, and I pulled up my own chair, and I said what I needed to say, and not everybody received it with kindness and grace.

Tracey: 16:07

I didn't necessarily always give kindness and grace either, but what I did is I moved a lot of that out of my body and I went home and I felt good about myself. So in closing, because making the scene, refusing to apologize for what someone else did, and calling your own voice exactly what it is instead of the cute little name that they slap on it. It's loud. It's inappropriate. It's not graceful.

Tracey: 16:43

It's a little unhinged in the very best way. And that's the most unladylike thing of all. Thanks for joining me today for That's Not Very Ladylike. If today's episode lit a fire, pushed your buttons, or called a little BS on the stories we've been sold, share it with another woman who's tired of being told to tone it down, smile more, or play nice. And help a girl out by making sure you subscribe, leave a quick review, and catch me on Instagram at that hormone girl.

Tracey: 17:15

And until next time, keep getting loud, messy, and raising hell because being ladylike is overrated.