In My Fifties, I’m Finally Learning to Say ‘F*ck You’
By: Vera Phillips
Tags: Midlife, This Is Us, Personal Essay, Women, Language

I’m blessed to have come to my salty mouth in these angry times. Bad words seem to be having a moment, and I’m in great company. Emma Byrne’s recent Swearing Is Good for You: The Amazing Science of Bad Language and Benjamin K. Bergen’s What the F: What Swearing Reveals About Our Language, Our Brains, and Ourselves both support the sport of swearing. Scientists and linguists seem to agree that there is therapy and humor, history and humanity in the art of profanity. Sarah Knight has built a thriving career on the sturdy back of the four-letter word with her No F*cks Given Guides. Saying the unsayable, breaking down a few tiny barriers of “polite” society, gives one a sense of agency. Plus, it’s fun.

I was eight years old in 1972 when George Carlin performed his infamous “seven dirty words” bit. It probably took a few years, given my age and the lack of internet, to become part of my consciousness, but it did.

Shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker, and tits.

These were the dirty words, the dirtiest according to Carlin, and it was clear to my child self that I must never say them. My father said a few of them, sometimes, and I idolized him. I heard some of them in the music I loved. But my mother never, ever uttered any of them, and it was an unspoken expectation that this was my future. She was my example of womanhood, and we did not speak filth. It wasn’t “ladylike.”

The times, as they do, have changed.

I now use almost all of those words and am comfortably conversant in most filth in my middle age. It has broadened my vocabulary and my ability to express myself with appropriate emotion. The first three come up almost daily now, but I trip on the fourth. It’s why I’m referring to it as “the fourth” and why I will not write it again here. The “c” word. My best friend charged her college roommates a quarter for every time it was used, and we still call it the “25-cent word.” I can’t make friends with this word; there’s something violent and gendered about it that seems loaded with menace. It’s a word that wants to be spat out, a weapon thrown at another. My British friends assure me that it’s not nearly as loaded in the U.K., but my understanding is that it’s used there almost exclusively to refer to men. It causes an internal wince when I hear it. I know it’s just a word, but its power is like poison in the mouth.

We must rage at a raging world sometimes, or we feel powerless.

I find “dick” to be a much more effective word, and it didn’t even make Carlin’s list. I’ve known a few guys named Dick, and they seemed fine, but I felt bad for them. Using the word “dick” to describe someone is clear and incisive. No one likes a dick, and everyone knows to avoid them, but I’m sure plenty of people love guys named Dick.

“Motherfucker” is also a word that causes me some discomfort. I think it’s because of the mother part. I’m a mother, I love my mother — why must name-calling implicate the mother? I’m all for naming the fuckers, but let’s leave the mother out of it. “Fucker” does the job nicely, and I don’t hesitate to use it when appropriate. For instance, my meddlesome neighbor is a stupid fucker. I prefer “fucking asshole” for him, though. It captures his essence more effectively.

I am finally discovering the joy in bad words. I love saying, and writing, things like “fuckall” and “fuckery.” “What the actual fuck?” is an odd thing I find myself saying. The fuck sandwich is satisfying, as in “absofuckinglutely” or “fanfuckingtastic.” And, of course, “fuck” and “dick” can be combined with many words to put a finer point on your message: “fuckface,” “dickhead,” “clusterfuck,” etc. I’m a babe in the woods of creative cursing but am taking to it with gusto. The possibilities are endless and delightful, and I have new ways of saying almost everything. Just this morning, I said, “There’s a panfuckingdemic!” in response to a question about socializing. In the midst of a recent political rant, I said, “They’re just kissing the asses of the assholes.” I need practice. I’m sure I sound ridiculous, like a tween posturing at summer camp, but I don’t care. Caution has been thrown, and I’m a new, mouthy woman. The bad words are so very good.

It must be noted that I don’t generally hurl filth at others. I’m not a name-caller and have maintained a modicum of my learned social graces. My neighbor may be a fucking asshole, but I’ve never told him that and am not likely to. I smile and wave or thank him for whatever weaponized kindness he’s peddling. But standing on my porch watching him toss another wild animal corpse into the woods, I will tell anyone in the room exactly what I think with color and verve. It’s not pretty, but neither is he.