He’s just Ken. But he’s kenough.
Ryan Gosling’s stint at Ken in the hugely successful Barbie film was all kinds of awesome. Even as Barbie’s accessory, we love him — just as he is. Much how Mark Darcey felt about Bridget Jones1. Dya remember that one?
I have a love-hate relationship with the word ‘just’. After plentiful confidence training (where you learn how to exist as you would have already, had society not done a number on you), I have pretty much eliminated the forbidden word from my writing. For those of you also prone to, ‘I’m just checking in’ I just wanted to ask’ I was just hoping’, you can do a ‘find and delete’, easy-peasy pie. It turns out the sentence works (just) fine without the offending one syllable. To further elevate your hardcore confident editorials, also ditch ‘only’, ‘no worries’, ‘apologies’, and ‘sorry’. You’ll be soon flying high on a cloud of your own self-congratulation.
In lieu of ‘sorry’, we are now of course inundated with thanks, instead. Thanks for noticing my huge mistake. Thanks for your patience while I take my sweet time bothering to respond.
Over apologising is an annoying trait for sure. I know that. I do it. I’ve inherited it from my lovely mum. She can drive me mad apologising for everything—yet nothing she is at fault of. NO APOLOGY NEEDED I find myself shrieking back. But damn it, let’s not eliminate the word entirely. There are some folk that really could do with picking up the excess supply.
A simple, yet accountable ‘sorry’ goes a long way to take responsibility when we’ve been a bit of a div. Or when you’ve waited for 40 minutes in the pissing rain for a tardy meeting, a ‘thank you for your patience’ doesn’t cut the mustard. Soz. But no.
Apologise when it’s needed. Don’t apologise when it’s not needed. Easy. When we’re writing stuff down at least. When you have time to craft something. But alas, life exists beyond the email. And so, we must contend with spoken word too, which—when unplanned—can be a more haphazard experience for those of us that talk in a stream-of-consciousness-blurting-out kind of arrangement. You could find yourself victim to not only the original words of doom but also, the policing of these now shameful words. The result—a flurry of original apology, a further apology for apologising, and a concluding apology for existing. Sorry about that.
Do we eliminate the words forever?
I’m thinking naaaah. I’ll keep them in my vocabulary and test out a new way to introduce myself.
Hi there. I’m just Dani. I am danough.
And I’m great at doing stuff.
How about you?
‘I love you just as you are’ are the words Colin Firth’s Mark Darcey says to Renée Kathleen Zellweger’s Bridget Jones.