lik·a·ble /ˈlīkəb(ə)l/ adjective:

"Likability is for ugly people, Jay." - Daisy Buchanan, The Great Gatsby

I'm fascinated by the notion of likability. Fascinated because I've never perceived myself to possess much of it and probably spend unnecessary cycles thinking about it. On occasion it's a term that enrages me because there is all sorts of ugliness that can be unpacked from saying someone is "unlikable" and at other times, I catch myself making those snap judgments of strangers.

That's why when I recently read through Roxane Gay's fabulous, if imperfect "Bad Feminist" (only imperfect in that I don't agree with all her positions, but that's the whole point of the book, so... well played Dr. Gay), her essay titled "Not Here to Make Friends" (read it.) had me pumping my fists and shouting "YAAAASSSS THISSSSSSS." It was a weird moment of passion and I managed to flip over the Ikea Poang I was sitting on (linked for reference, you get the point).

At its core, the article (which I'm attempting to cite from memory) discusses the impossibly high, extremely dull standards we hold female literary characters to. It challenges the idea that female characters need to be likable to be engaging and that for the authors, likability of their characters is equivalent to the quality of their writing. Which is ridiculous and I want to pull in a great quote from author Claire Messud whom Gay cites (brackets inserted for humorous emphasis):

"Would you want to be friends with Humbert Humbert [pedophile]? ... Hamlet [misogynist and murderer]? ...Oedipus [no need to explain this one]? ... Raskolnikov [murderer]? ... Gregor Samsa [cockroach]? ... If you’re reading to find friends, you’re in deep trouble. We read to find life, in all its possibilities."

Full disclosure: I added Samsa in there for fun. Nobody wants to be friends with a bug.

The Workplace Dilemma

Likability is a common word that's thrown around in Silicon Valley and in my line of customer-facing work. You're expected to be a culture fit and to put forth a certain demeanor as a representative of the company to the outside world. Unsurprisingly, likability permeates many facets of my career. A critical part of being successful in my job is coming off respectable, trustworthy, and overall friendly. Which brings to mind a question that Gay poses in her article: "Why is likability even a question?" In personal relationships, I one hundred percent get it and I have more thoughts on it below.

In business, however, aren't delivered results and desired outcomes the allegedly most important factors? What does that have to do with the lilt in my voice, the words I choose to make my point, whether I take you to dinner or ask you about your kids? This is of course all matters of scale. I'm not making reference to assholes or people who actively create a hostile environment. But for the rest of us who coexist in a realm of mostly good people who have unique ways of interacting, I say again, what does likability have much to do with anything? Does my likability somehow prevent you from achieving your goals? I venture to guess no.

Likability conjures images of "the man" for me, which is ironic because Silicon Valley purports itself to be anti-establishment. At many companies (luckily not my current one), "culture fit" and "likable" are flaunted as synonyms, but mostly a hidden equivalency is drawn between those words and "conformist." If, as I do, you work with a ton of white men both in and outside of your company, conformity's going to be a pretty pointless battle. There are only 24 hours in a day and I can't spend half of that wasting time debating whether telling someone "no" without apologizing sounds bitchy.

The Friends and Family Exception

There are two distinct moments in my youth that I remember with some amount of clarity:

1. My kindergarten teacher telling my mom I'm too bossy.
2. A 4th grade teacher (not even my teacher specifically), telling me I needed to "tone it down."

Luckily I hard passed on both.

People who know me well know that not too many opinions matter to me other than my parents'. My dad likes to prepend the following to every complaint he makes: "We didn't escape communist China for you to...":

• Buy cereal full priced, 
• Cooperate with the HOA, 
• Watch Netflix on a TV *this* small, 
• Eat chicken breast, 
• (yes these are all real quotes)

I think if your parents survived a violent class struggle and/or mass purge, you owe it to them to care about what they say. A hot topic with my mom is often my likability. Sarcasm doesn't often fly with her and she likes to comment cheekily that I'm probably not very nice to my friends, to which I respond, "you are correct." To be fair, my friends aren't very nice to me either. Afterwards, I usually sit by myself and wonder if I'd have more friends if I were more likable. And what would that mean? Do I act more breezy? Make my laugh a little more feminine? Not point out when someone says something nonsensical? Stop telling them they should go set themselves on fire? (I'M KIDDING!... mostly.) Maybe I'd have more friends if stopped introducing myself as "Hi I'm Tiffany, I'm not here to make friends, bitch." The gears are turning, people.

Gay's article points out that characters who conform to rules of likability make for extremely uninteresting reads. I'm hoping it's the same in life because I don't think I do enough objectively cool things in my life to bolster a likable (read: vanilla) personality. I've always wanted to have more friends and envy people who have a ton of friends. Just like everyone else, I want to be beloved. I just don't think it's worth toning down for.

At The End of 2016

I follow enough pundits and political experts to have at least a loose grasp on every angle of where the election "went wrong." (Answer is very simple. A major American value is to always look out for number 1 and that's exactly what the people did.) One angle that's gotten a surprisingly small amount of analysis post election is how much sexism actually set the tone for many of the other more prominent factors ("trustworthiness" is a word I could write an entire extra post about). I want to point to a quote, not by Trump (too easy), but instead, by then Senator Obama in a 2008 democratic presidential debate in which he told Clinton she was "likable enough." A bizarre moment of punching down for him.

If I were voting for a president based on likability, I would've written in Zooey Deschanel on my ballot.

Watching that 2008 video again and the rest of the Clinton campaign in 2016 is like watching a lesson in old fashioned etiquette. Where Clinton stands there and smiles while men call her nasty and a liar. She has to think about when she speaks, how she speaks, when she lifts her finger, her volume, her tone, her facial expressions, the clothes she wears, how short her hair is, how to stand, when to wave, how to wave. Then people say she's not natural enough (no shit, would you be?), and hence (all together now) not very likable.

In a way, 2016 has been a culmination of my lifelong battle with the word "Likable." In a time, where my energy can and needs to be spent doing a myriad of other things, including building a career, being a good daughterfriendgirlfriend, being a valuable member of the local community, being politically active, watching Netflix, and doing laundry; having to expend energy even worrying about being likable is an exercise in futility. As Gay concludes in her article, being unlikable is actively refusing to give in to the temptation to follow rules and pretend to be someone you're not. "They are, instead, themselves."

I am, instead, myself.