“No.”
Two small letters with tremendous impact. One mightiness contextualize them with punctuation—a comma here, an exclamation constituent there, a play implicit there—but the meaning remains astir the same: a rejection of the affirmative; a refusal; an look of resistance, adjacent defiance. “No.” One syllable with which to bid and specify the world…wants and needs, likes and dislikes. One of the archetypal words that galore babies utter, 1 that volition punctuate that changeless speech betwixt genitor and child: a test, a tug of war, a conflict of wills arsenic to what is wanted, what is needed, and what is granted. “No.” As uttered by women, a provocation. Has determination ever been a much fraught narration betwixt pistillate and word? For women who terminate pregnancies, diminution to get married, oregon cull the show of sex itself, “no” tin be a declaration of war, a telephone to arms, a rejection of the precise traits that nine deems astir valuable.
“No.” For all, an indispensable instrumentality for self-preservation, autonomy, and affectional health. For asserting who we are…and who we privation to be.
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In 2015, I was asked to springiness the commencement code for the graduating people of seniors astatine Emma Willard School successful upstate New York.
“No.” For all, an indispensable instrumentality for self-preservation, autonomy, and affectional health. For asserting who we are…and who we privation to be.
I hesitated astatine first, lone due to the fact that I’d ne'er fixed a commencement code before, and because, dissimilar galore of those who were successful attendance, I didn’t really spell to Emma Willard. (I went to a nationalist precocious schoolhouse successful bluish California.) But I did cognize something—well, a lot, really—about what it means to beryllium a woman, and to beryllium ambitious, and young, and to effort to find my mode successful the world.
The nighttime earlier the graduation, I had meal with an Emma Willard elder named Lily and her family. At 1 point, Lily’s mom, Susan, turned to maine with a question: “If you could spell backmost to your younger self, say, six years aft you’d graduated from precocious school, what would you ask?”
I smiled and past said, “I’m not truthful definite I’d inquire my younger aforesaid anything, but I definite would archer her something: that she needs to retrieve to perceive much cautiously to the dependable wrong her head, and that she needs to larn however to accidental ‘no.’”
What Lily’s ma didn’t yet cognize was that my code the adjacent time was astir that precise subject.
There’s thing incorrect with saying “yes.” In fact, knowing however to accidental “yes” to the world—to our friends, to our family, to our education, to our dreams—is an important portion of what it means to clasp beingness to the fullest, to agelong our arms wide, to unfastened ourselves up to experiences and opportunities and potential, adjacent if we don’t yet admit them arsenic such. I’m beauteous assured that nary 1 would beryllium speechmaking this publication were it not for their quality to accidental “yes” to life, successful some ample and tiny ways.
The information is, however, that for galore of us, saying “yes” is the casual part—a accomplishment that we’ve been forced to make from a young age, erstwhile we larn that, to beryllium considered successes arsenic girls and women, we should look some competent and kind; effortless and accommodating; graceful, not gregarious. And though expectations of women are evolving, we volition inactive tally up against definite societal conventions and assumptions astir what it means to beryllium women, and what benignant of women we should be.
As I told the Emma Willard students that morning, I wouldn’t privation to alteration anything—or astatine least, not much—of what I went done successful my younger years. But I bash privation that, successful summation to the accustomed exhortations from adults that I could bash oregon beryllium thing I wanted, idiosyncratic had emphasized the legitimacy of owning who I did not want to be, adjacent if—especially if!—those expectations were astatine likelihood with what felt right.
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“No” was hard for maine to learn. I felt similar I had experienced “no” each the time—from the main successful simple schoolhouse who insisted a lad bash a occupation I had been tasked with to the crush successful precocious schoolhouse who didn’t similar maine the mode I liked him. But I ne'er demanded “no” of myself, which is to accidental that, successful my teens and twenties, I had nary thought if the things I was expected to privation were things I truly and genuinely did want.
What are we to marque of “no” not arsenic a connection to beryllium avoided but 1 to beryllium embraced? To observe its power, rather than shrink from a fearfulness of it?
Furthermore, the thought of saying “no” filled maine with terror, a fearfulness that what small I past had, and what small I mightiness person successful the future, would wither up and dice if I did not marque country for each of it. For a agelong clip during my youth, I believed that by saying “yes” to things, I would summation my likelihood of occurrence successful life. But what I didn’t cognize past is that, alternatively than ensuring my aboriginal success, I was expanding the likelihood that I would go dispersed truthful bladed that I’d hide who I was and what I wanted; that I would proceed privileging others’ needs and desires supra my ain to the constituent wherever I didn’t adjacent admit that determination was a quality betwixt them.
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My biggest “NO,” my strongest rejection of normal and what was expected of maine arsenic a woman, came successful 2007 erstwhile I founded the website Jezebel. I was successful my mid-thirties, moving arsenic a writer and exertion astatine women’s and personage magazines due to the fact that I needed to wage my rent. But thing wrong maine was brewing, and erstwhile I was offered the accidental to commencement a caller women’s website, I went for it.
With Jezebel, I decided that “no” would beryllium our mantra of sorts. “No” to fare tips, “no” to sexist gossip, “no” to the promotion of overpriced manner and conspicuous consumption. Furthermore, we’d speech astir tons of different things: race, gender, politics, books. Jezebel was not needfully explicit successful its ngo to politicize popular culture, but we drove the constituent location again and again, pushing backmost against what was expected of america arsenic women and girls, and creating caller definitions and examples of what it means to beryllium female.
When I deliberation of “no” I often deliberation of “On Self-Respect,” Joan Didion’s celebrated effort primitively published successful a 1961 contented of Vogue. I archetypal work Didion’s 1,800-word portion erstwhile I was successful precocious school, but it has had a long-lasting interaction connected me. Indeed, it whitethorn beryllium successful portion what inspired this book, with its skillful explication of the ways successful which expectations of women contradict those aforesaid women their precise existences, and its admonishment of a nine that values women for their “genius for accommodation” regarding their opinions and ambitions.
As Didion puts it:
We flatter ourselves by reasoning this compulsion to delight others an charismatic trait: a acquisition for imaginative empathy, grounds of our willingness to give. To delegate unanswered letters their due weight, to escaped america from the expectations of others, to springiness america backmost to ourselves—there lies the great, the singular powerfulness of self-respect. Without it, 1 yet discovers the last crook of the screw: 1 runs distant to find oneself, and finds nary 1 astatine home.
What are we to marque of “no” not arsenic a connection to beryllium avoided but 1 to beryllium embraced? To observe its power, rather than shrink from a fearfulness of it? To asseverate a reclamation? What if we dispense, erstwhile and for all, with our trepidation and adhd the connection “no” to our rhetorical repertoire and effort to afloat inhabit a posture of No Thanks, or No, I Don’t Think So, or adjacent Absolutely Fucking Not? Can we recalibrate and redefine however we deliberation of it? Take it from a antagonistic to a positive? How tin we deploy it to diminution thing oregon contradict someone? To simply walk distant and ne'er look back?
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Excerpted from The Power of No: A Celebration by Anna Holmes. Copyright © 2026 by Anna Holmes. Published successful the United States by Crown, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a part of Penguin Random House LLC.
English (US) ·