This morning, I completed my transformation into a full-blown bitch.

I have often been scolded for using the word “bitch” in what I am told is an inappropriate manner, most specifically because I apply it to people of all ages, genders, shapes and sizes. Children can be bitches. Old men can be bitches. Even items can be bitches, if they are proving themselves to be especially difficult. I feel this is entirely accurate, but one particularly sticky opponent of mine — dare I refer to him as a bitch? — has childishly pointed me to the dictionary where he claims, by definition, that I am wrong.

Behold:

bitch (bch)
n.

  1. A female canine animal, especially a dog.
  2. Offensive.
    1. A woman considered to be spiteful or overbearing.
    2. A lewd woman.
    3. A man considered to be weak or contemptible.
  3. Slang. A complaint.
  4. Slang. Something very unpleasant or difficult.

Well, let me tell you: I watched A Beautiful Mind when it was on ABC this weekend, so I know that if you’re smart enough and crazy enough, you can sit in a pub with your friends and visualize scary-looking blondes and reasonable-looking brunettes, and then have an amazing idea that wins you a Nobel Prize. It’s all right there on film. The way that you go about this is that you take current ideas and you having dazzling revelations about how out-moded they are, so you say:

“Incomplete! Incomplete!”

Then you go on to explain your breathtakingly simple, so amazing that anyone should have thought of it if they were just as clever as you are, idea.

Thus: The definition of “bitch” is incomplete. Its usage as a verb (i.e. that you can say, “I bitch”, “he bitches” and “she has bitched” without raising any eyebrows) and its usage as a noun (where “bitch” is allegedly confined to female objects) implies an incompatability. If a man is allowed to undertaking bitching, then he, therefore, can be a bitch. If he is both bitching and moaning, then logically he is an annoying bitch. This cancels out the female gendering of the noun, and opens the application of the term to anyone who is bugging the shit out of you with their selfishness.

I will await Jennifer Connelly falling in love with me, and I will look for my Nobel Prize in the mail. Thank you.

I know there’s a whole movement underway to reclaim the word “bitch”, since it’s generally accepted as a gender slur which is most often applied by unimaginative men towards any women who do not immediately fuck them. But rather than try to eliminate the pejorative side of the word, which would take a lot of work and would likely never be entirely successful, why not simply re-align it? Is it more difficult to take the word “cock” and make it a hip term for sassy young men, or to simply apply it to anyone who’s being an arrogant shit-for-brains?

For example:

This morning I woke up in a shitty mood. I was pissy and angry the entire time that I was crawling out of bed, shaving, showering, and greasing up my hair. Then I accidentally scratched the zit that was sitting on my forehead.

You have to understand, there are those little forehead zits that everyone gets, and then there are the Mountains of Pain that feel like your entire head is being eaten by a crab. The ones that throb uncomfortably all night, the ones that make you sleep on your face because the pillow is cold, and it might reduce the swelling just a little tiny bit. The ones that, when you’re brushing your hair in the morning and you accidentally catch them, result in intense, sustained agony that leaves you wondering if pulling your face off is really that bad an alternative.

I did not have one of those little forehead zits that everyone gets.

So as I’m walking out the door, paying a passing courtesy to my sister and my adorable nephew who she is dropping off, do I respond to her greeting with warmth and good cheer? Oh, no no no.

Instead, when she says, “Have you been out brawling?”, in reference to the small crack in my lip that I got from the extraordinarily dry air in my office building, I look her straight in the eye and gush,

“Yes, FINE, I am growing a third EYE thank you for NOTICING,” and stomp off to my car.

What a bitch, eh? See what I’m talking about?

When discussing the universality of bitchiness, it’s critical to recognize that there are three key compontents to being an utter bitch, and that none of them are even slightly gender-specific. To wit:

  1. Solipsism: A real, class-A bitch is convinced that everything in the world happens specifically to annoy them. The concept of “other people” is something dim and alien to them, and generally only becomes important when they fall under attack for something completely selfish that the bitch has done. Which is important, because the bitch is always keyed in on…
  2. Being the Victim: No bitch likes to be proved wrong, because it undermines both their obnoxious authority and their power to attack those around them. Unfortunately, there are very few positions from which one can safely throw stones in all directions, except for sainthood and the role of the victim. Since the former is almost impossible to achieve and maintain for any amount of time, the latter is generally the posture that bitches will adopt, since it affords the requisite moral high groud, while providing a suprising amount of latitude from which to launch…
  3. Vicious Personal Attacks: These can be breathtaking in their variety, and range from passive-aggressive salvos of guilt, to condescending advice on how to remedy all of your flaws, to shrieking tantrums that are only tenuously connected to real things that have happened in the actual world. They are almost always an expression of outrage at the cruelty of the people around them, and can communicate:
    1. That the bitch knows you’re going to make fun of him/her so you might as well just shut up anyway,
    2. That you’ve ruined the weekend/birthday/movie/dinner/event in question, so why not just give it up right now,
    3. Or some other bullshit.

    Bitches will rarely change the type of vicious personal attack they use, once settled, so their tactics can quickly be identified. If you are in the field and scouting for new bitches to avoid, it is helpful to keep in mind the common calls of all bitches: “Nobody asked meeeeeee,” and “It’s not faaaaiiirrrr.”

If we take the principles we’ve just discussed and apply them to my own example, then we can clearly see that I was a complete bitch to my sister and my mother this morning. I took my own insecurity about the planetoid that was growing out of my forehead and assumed that it would be the first thing on everyone else’s mind; I transformed a perfectly jovial comment about my apparent late-night prize-fighting into a deadly insult about my skin; and finally, I issued a ridiculously over-snippy response to the situation that was supposed to be funny but came out stupid.

Yeah, the word may have started out referring to female canines, but the English language is a capricious and flexible organism, and it’s high time we recognize that “bitch” is no longer the sole province of frat boys who can’t think of anything else when they’re loaded. No, it’s for all of you now, for each irritating, self-centered, martyred, complaining one of you.

You bitches.