I’ve been anticipating it and it finally happened. Someone (Ed Rollins) called Alexandria Ocasio Cortez “little girl.”
Of course, AOC thought the comment was pure misogyny. And her response probably caused lots of old guys to chuckle and shake their heads saying, “Oh little girl, you have so much to learn.”
Obviously, there is a huge generation gap at play but in this case the “little girl” moniker is something AOC shouldn’t dismiss. It’s a warning she should heed.
Remember when Trump called Marco Rubio “Little Marco?” It wasn’t a reference to his hand size or the size of anything else. The slam meant that Rubio was still wet behind his ears. He didn’t have the breadth of experience to be President. Sure, Rubio had a lot of political policy positions, but he lacked real-world experience. He was never responsible for executing his policy positions or accountable for their results.
Rubio didn’t experience the hard knocks, leaving him green and untried. Trump picked up on this created the “Little Marco” nickname.
But Trump also gave him some respect. He didn’t call him “Little Boy Marco.”
Being called “little boy” or “little girl” means you don’t have the basic the knowledge to come up with good ideas. It means you still need to learn how the world and your workplace function before you open your mouth and express your ideas.
We are all “little boys” and “little girls” in the beginning of our careers. Even though we have a college or technical degree, we haven’t applied our education out in the real world. Therefore, we haven’t discovered the many ways our book learning fails against the realities of the world.
We need to spend our early years wisely because what we learn in these years sets the path for the rest of our career. We need to tackle challenging assignments and experience the hard knocks. This is how we us learn and grow. But most importantly, it’s how we earn respect.
AOC needs that experience. When she answers questions, her gaffs reveal how much she still has to learn. So, she needs to spend the next few years quietly learning, challenging herself and growing.
But unfortunately, she is in the social media spotlight. And she may be confusing media popularity with respect. She needs some old school mentors to pull her out of the spotlight, take her under their wing and challenge her.
If she expects to be taken seriously, her ideas have to do more than sound and feel good. She must make them complete and feasible. She needs to figure out how to make them work in the real world. Then she must have the courage to present them and be held accountable for their execution and their outcome.
This is how it works in the real world for anyone, man or woman, who wants to be a leader.
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