Picture in your mind’s eye the disdain and disappointment on a puppy trainer’s face when their tiny charge misses the newspaper by a good few inches. This was the look deployed by my mother whenever I casually lobbed the F-word into conversation.
“Tanya,” she’d wail, her face creasing into a groan. “Your mouth.” And then, a little sadly to herself: “Where did I go wrong with you?”
Quite what she would make of new research published last month is anyone's guess. New research by Lancaster University has revealed that women have reached parity with men on the swearing front. Researchers say women make about 546 out of every million words they speak the one beginning with F, while men average 540. We're currently 10 times more likely than men to say "s**t", up from four times as likely two decades ago.
Full disclosure: I swear like a sailor in the dentist’s chair. There aren’t enough asterisks in the world, honestly. I can just about keep my bib clean while on radio and around my accountant (fine, that’s a lie).
Scientists are sort of in my corner, though. According to the folks in white coats, swearing activates the “fight or flight” response in the system, leading to a surge in adrenaline and a corresponding analgesic effect. As such, the health benefits of swearing include increased circulation, elevated endorphins, and an overall sense of calm, control, and wellbeing.
Certainly, the limbic part in everyone’s brain seems to go into overdrive when women drop an F-bomb. It’s seen as one of the most uncouth and unladylike things we can do – the preserve of ye olde worlde ladette who probably drinks pints and loves shagging like a bloke to boot.
‘Filthy trollop’
Others denounce it as showing a lack of intellect or imagination (a male newspaper columnist once described
Helen Mirren
, herself fond of a swear, as a “filthy trollop”). In 2013, American supreme court justice Antonin Scalia placed the erosion of society at the feet of women who use the F-word.
Many of the male denizens of a Reddit thread “Do you find women who swear a turnoff?” reckon it’s a deal-breaker, too. “I think the lack of a filter shows a lack of social awareness and consideration and that is definitely a turn-off,” writes one.
“I prefer girls who swear very little. Mostly because it adds to the cuteness and I’d pick cute over hot any day,” writes another.
Certainly, my mother didn’t bat so much as an eyelash when my brothers turned the air blue, and it’s this double standard that boils my kidneys. Men are rarely told to hold themselves back and control their language. Women speaking out is one thing, seemingly. Those who express themselves with something as transgressive as cursing, doubly so. Women are supposed to take up as little space as possible, and this goes for airtime and attention.
For years, we’ve been held to a higher standard then men. Seriously, f*** that.
Writing in the Association of Psychological Science's Perspectives on Psychological Science, academic Timothy Jay notes: "Swearing is positively correlated with extraversion and is a defining feature of a Type A personality. It is negatively correlated with conscientiousness, agreeableness, sexual anxiety and religiosity."
Deeply unfeminine
No wonder it’s seen as deeply unfeminine (the delineation of alpha and beta personalities into “male” and “female” = a rant for another time). And it certainly wouldn’t be the first time women have been called out for behaviour seen as traditionally male. I mean, what better way to take over a space than with a nicely deployed C-word? What better way to demonstrate a most unladylike lack of level-headedness?
Personally, I don’t do it to make others feel uncomfortable, or to dominate the space. Much as perceived wisdom might have you believe, I don’t do it out of laziness, to be one of the boys, or because my vocabulary is lacking.
I use swear words to punctuate sentences the way others use commas, offering as they do a sort of mid-sentence breather. The right colourful swear word – a divine marriage of rough consonants and blunt vowels – hits the spot in a cleansing, cathartic way that a plain old “blasted’ won’t. It hammers home the point with a punch.
If it’s not what nice girls do, that suits me fine. It’s my body – grubby gob included – and I’ll drop a C-bomb with it if I want to.
