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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.
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 back to That's Not Very Ladylike. I'm That Hormone Girl or Tracy Willingham. And today, we're naming a rule that almost every woman in this country whereas was raised under, even though almost nobody says it out loud. Ladies don't say no.
Tracey:They're afraid of what happens if they do. That's the rule. And once we say it out loud, every one of you is going to be able to point to a 100 places it has shown up in your life. So I want to back up way back and tell you where this rule first got installed in me. Because for most of us, the first place we learned not to mean no was not at an office, and it wasn't with our mother-in-law, and it definitely wasn't with the PTA.
Tracey:It was with a boy. This doesn't go into a very graphic description, but I do just wanna offer a warning that I do mention something about domestic violence in this story. So if that is too much for you, it's totally okay if you have to stop this episode or if you need to fast forward. I totally understand. So as I said, it started with a boy.
Tracey:I was in college and I was dating someone that I thought was charming and protective. He was a little intense, but I kind of liked it. And it really was like he cared. I mean, I felt like a queen, like he is going to take care of me. And in the beginning he started doing this thing where he would tell me what to wear.
Tracey:And it started as like suggestions at first, you know, like, you should wear that one because I like that one. And it just started as suggestions, you know, like, you should wear that one. That one's my favorite. You look so pretty when you wear that. And I thought it was so sweet.
Tracey:And I thought it was attentive. And I thought it was a guy who like paid attention to what looked good on me. So I was like, Let's go. Let's do it. Then one night, I noticed we got into this trend, and he actually laid out an outfit for me.
Tracey:And I said for the first time in our relationship, no. I don't want to wear that. I had something else in mind. And I'm not kidding. This is how quickly that response happened.
Tracey:The next thing I knew, he punched the wall, he kicked the wall, and he screamed at me. And I sat there frozen watching this man that I thought loved me lose control over a piece of clothing? And here's what I want every woman listening to hear. The wall came up before I did. The wall is almost always before.
Tracey:The thing in the room before the thing happens to her, that's the warning. Most of us were never taught to understand it. But that night, that was my warning. So the next morning I woke up, I looked at the outfit that he had laid out, and I thought, I don't want to do this. This isn't who I am.
Tracey:How have I become this girl? So I thought, I'm not doing it. I'm wearing the outfit that I want to wear. And so I did. I put on the outfit.
Tracey:I went to class. And I ran into him later, and we went back to my room to study. And that was the first day that my partner hit me. He hit me because I wore an outfit that he had determined was unnecessary. I had dared to say no and not listen.
Tracey:So I'm not telling you that story to relive it because it's certainly not a highlight in my life. And sometimes I think for women, you know, we carry so much shame around that. Know, other I mean, right now there might even be some women being like, I would never do that. No man's going to tell me what I can wear. It's so easy to say that until you're inside the moment.
Tracey:And if you've never been inside that moment, I'm so happy you weren't because it was shocking. I didn't understand how I found myself there. Now, the good news is I'm out of that relationship, and I have been for a very long time. I'm telling you that story because that was the first place that I learned that no was a starting point for negotiation, not a complete sentence. That saying no at times has a price.
Tracey:And then if I really meant no, I better be ready to pay for it. And once I learned that lesson, once any woman learns that lesson, it starts creeping in to your entire ecosystem. It's everywhere. So let's talk about the cost because it's not always domestic violence. There are many times a day that women are saying no on a level where it doesn't get to that.
Tracey:There are many women every day saying no and the situation doesn't rise to that level. But there is a rule that goes with this. And it doesn't just stay in romantic relationships. It can move into your career, your friendships, your family, your healthcare, especially your health care. So the boss who keeps adding to your plate and you keep saying yes because what if no makes them think I'm not committed.
Tracey:The mother-in-law who shows up and you let her stay another night because what if no makes her think you don't love her? The friend who calls in tears for the third time this month and you sit on the phone for two hours when you needed to be sleeping because of what if no makes her think that you don't care. The doctor who tells you your labs are normal when you know your body is not normal And you nod and leave because what if no makes him think I'm a difficult patient? Every one of those is the same rule. Don't really mean no.
Tracey:Be afraid of what happens if you do. So let's look at some interesting statistics. In 2007, researchers at Boston University and the National Institutes of Health published a study using data from the Framingham Offspring Study. So 3,682 participants were part of this study, and they were followed for ten years. And they were looking at the relationship between marital communication and mortality.
Tracey:And here's what they found. Women who self silenced during conflict with their spouse, meaning women who swallowed what they wanted to say in order to keep the peace, had four times the risk of dying over the ten year follow-up. Compared to women who didn't self silence, there is a body of research now connecting chronic self silencing in middle life women to artery disease that leads to heart attacks and strokes. Which means the women who got the most praise growing up for being agreeable, accommodating, easygoing, low maintenance, not making a fuss, those women are paying for that praise with their arteries. Your body is keeping the score every time you said yes when you meant no, every time you swallowed it, every time you absorb something to keep the peace.
Tracey:So that cost is not metaphorical. Now I want to do something I love doing on this podcast, which is asking where did this rule even come from in the first place, right? Because they don't fall out of the sky. Somebody made them up and then somebody benefits from rules. The good girl who doesn't really mean no rule has roots that go deep in American culture.
Tracey:So in Victorian and early American culture, a woman's worth was measured by her agreeableness. The ideal woman was described as modest, submissive, pious, and pure. Those four words showed up in nineteenth century etiquette manuals, marriage advice, and Sunday sermons over and over and over again. Modest, submissive, pious, and pure. Translated, what that means is don't take up space, don't disagree, don't question, and definitely don't have desires of your own.
Tracey:Layered on top of that was a legal reality that I want you to just hear for a second. For most of American history, when a woman married, she essentially became legal property of her husband. She couldn't own land in her own name. She couldn't sign her own contracts. And in many states, the idea of a married woman refusing her husband, especially physically, wasn't even legally recognized as a refusal.
Tracey:That changed in different states at different times. So some states did not fully change those laws, you're not even gonna believe this, until the 1980s and 1990s. The '80s and '90s, ladies. So this is not ancient history. This, for many of us, was our mother's generation.
Tracey:For some of us, this is us. The cultural understanding that a woman doesn't really mean no was not a vibe. It was a law. It was written down and it was enforceable. Now, this is the part where I really want to be careful and accurate.
Tracey:The ladies don't say no rule was always selectively applied. So the version of ladyhood being protected by these rules, let's be honest, specifically was a white, middle to upper class, married Protestant version. So black women in this country were never granted the social protection of being considered delicate or in need of preservation. Working class women didn't have the financial luxury to refuse work that was unsafe or coercive. And immigrant women were positioned as outside the category of lady entirely.
Tracey:So the rule wasn't applied evenly, but the rule still shaped the culture for everyone. Because once you set up a system where some women get protection through restriction and other women are excluded from that protection altogether, every woman in the system loses in different ways. So the women inside the rule loses their voices, the women outside the rule lose their dignity, and the culture as a whole agrees quietly that women's no doesn't really count. But I do want to name this because if I tell you the history of ladies don't really mean no rule and don't tell you who it was for and who it excluded, then I'm not sharing accurate history. And so we always have to remember that this history shaped all of us, even those of us that it wasn't for.
Tracey:So if this were allowed to be said, let me say some sentences out loud that women have been swallowing for generations. Sentences that if we were allowed to mean no, we would say. No is a complete sentence. I don't owe you a reason. I changed my mind.
Tracey:I never agreed in the first place. I said yes because I was afraid of what would happen if I said no. I'm tired of being told that my hesitation was foreplay. I'm tired of being told that my discomfort was cute. I'm tired of being asked to manage your reaction to my no.
Tracey:I'm allowed to disappoint you. I'm allowed to disappoint my mother. I'm allowed to disappoint my partner. I'm allowed to disappoint my boss. I'm allowed to disappoint myself in the eyes of someone who was always going to be disappointed in me anyway.
Tracey:And the big one, this is a big one, I am allowed to say no without rehearsing for it for three damn days first. And one more thing I want to name briefly because it's true and it's the cultural moment we're in. There's a conversation happening right now out loud in podcasts, in books, on social media about women rethinking their relationships, their dating standards, what they're done tolerating from men. That conversation isn't new. It's just no longer being whispered.
Tracey:So I'm not here to tell you what to think about it. Your relationship is yours. Your marriage, your committed relationships, they are yours. But I want you to know the women out loud right now are not crazier than the women who came before them. They are simply finally refusing to swallow it, and the culture is loud about it because the culture is uncomfortable with women saying no out loud, which is exactly the point.
Tracey:So, reflection. Here's what I want you to take from this. If you have spent your entire adult life saying yes when you meant no, you are not a doormat. You are not a bad feminist. You are a woman who was raised inside a system designed to make your no inconvenient.
Tracey:You learned the lessons that were available to you. Most of us learned them young. Most of us learned them in places where the price of saying no was higher than the price of saying yes. And what I want you to know is the work isn't to suddenly become someone who says no easily because that's not realistic. The work is to start noticing, to catch yourself typing the yes, to pause for one second and ask, Am I saying yes because I want to?
Tracey:Or am I saying yes because I'm afraid of what happens if I don't? And then sometimes it's to say no anyway. Not every time, not in a way that wins you a feminist award. Just sometimes just one no in a week that you wouldn't have said before. That's how you start.
Tracey:Because the body that has been saying yes for forty years, it's going to take some time to learn that no is also a safe word. Okay. So take care of yourselves this week. Think about somewhere where you can say no. Catch yourself once before you say yes.
Tracey:And remember that you are a woman with the right to say no any damn time you want. 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:And until next time, keep getting loud, messy, and raising hell because being ladylike is overrated.