Lots of things in life are dirty—thoughts, laundry, my car because I only wash it like twice a year. Several years ago, I started a little blog with this vision of all the stories I would tell and zingers I would share. Since I am obsessed with Alli and Joey, my Bitches, they had to be headliners.
Bitch is a word I use a lot and I’ve been called out for my love of using the word. It’s a little amazing what some people let knot up their panties. My use of bitch is at times playful, at times serious, and most of the time, literal. Words only have the power you give them and the offensiveness of a word lies more in the tone that the speaker uses. If I if am telling a story that starts with, “You’ll never guess what the Bitches did today,” most people won’t care. You certainly don’t care, as you’ve chosen to read this. It isn’t like the time when I worked at an after-school program and a first grader, whose parents were going through a rough divorce, referred to me as a “f#cking bitch” as he threw a toy at me.
The point here is that most of the time when I am using the word, it is in reference to the female canines that live with me. The Bitches. Perhaps technically, they are altered females, since I decided they wouldn’t be mommas and had them spayed. But I think that is sort of like telling a woman who had a hysterectomy that she is no longer really a woman. Alli and Joey will always be Bitches to me. Bitches, the plural of bitch, which, I am using correctly according to Merriam Webster’s website:
Definition of BITCH
1: the female of the dog or some other carnivorous mammals
2: a: lewd or immoral woman
b: a malicious, spiteful, or overbearing woman —sometimes used as a generalized term of abuse
3: something that is extremely difficult, objectionable, or unpleasant
4: complaint
Examples of BITCH
1. That word is a bitch to spell.
2. <tiresome members of the tour group who had one bitch after another>
Origin of BITCH
Middle English bicche, from Old English bicce
First Known Use: before 12th century
(You'll sleep better knowing that.)
Related to BITCH
Synonyms: beef, complaint, bleat, carp, fuss, grievance, gripe, grouch, grouse, grumble, holler, kvetch, lament, miserere, moan, murmur, plaint, squawk, wail, whimper, whine, whinge [British], yammer
So all the synonyms are related to the verb.
Interestingly, if you click on the definition of bitch for kids… drumroll…
One entry found for bitch.
Main Entry: bitch
Pronunciation: bich
Function: noun
: a female dog
I guess kids are only supposed to know that a bitch is a girl dog. I couldn’t imagine where they would possibly learn about definitions of bitch other than a student dictionary anyway.
It isn’t my fault that society has taken a word and made it insulting or negative. I am probably overbearing and immoral to some people, so call me a bitch.
Amy Poehler talks about this age (nearing 40) as being a space where you are too old to get away with being cute and not old enough to be wise. That bitch is so right. But it’s also a space to get grounded and not be afraid of who you really are anymore.
So here I am: Jules. Being Two Bitches and Jules is pretty cool. It can be fun, messy, and exciting, sometimes simultaneously—we didn’t choose the #bitchlife, the #bitchlife chose us.