Four years ago, during a talk I was giving on Katharine Hepburn, to celebrate the publication of my book How to Hepburn, a woman raised her hand and asked, “But I heard Hepburn wasn’t a very nice person, especially as she got older.” Two years later, at my reading from The Gospel According to Coco Chanel after all the questions about Chanel’s greatest contribution to fashion, and whether or not she was really a Nazi spy, someone asked “but, wasn’t Chanel sort of a bitch?” I just published the third in my kick ass women trilogy — How Georgia Became O’Keeffe — and it’s only a matter of time before someone wants to know whether it’s true that O’Keeffe’s nickname was the A-hole of Abiquiu.
The questions are always asked by women. Even though there are men in the audience, men don’t seem to care much whether these legendary 20th century women were still, in the face of their staggering achievements, nice. Men are ahead of the game: they know that being thought of as a “nice guy” is tantamount to being thought of as a pushover, a non-entity. Nice guys, as we all know, finish last.
But we women, generation in, generation out, seem to place a lot of value on being nice. I’m not talking about genuinely positive personality traits like being kind, fair, compassionate, tolerant or generous that we confuse with niceness — but being amiable and agreeable. I’m sure there’s some evolutionary reason for this. Plus, someone has to chair the school auction.
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