GIRL TALK - Column

Being nasty is a nice way to break the silence
My mother always told me that if I didn't have anything nice to say, I should say nothing at all.
This was all well and good in theory and might have worked marvellously when I was 10 and regularly got my pigtails pulled by the boys at school for telling them they had nits.
It no doubt saved my skin on a number of occasions when I felt like deploying bad language to tell my mum what I really thought about her curfew rules.
If I'd only followed her advice and not revealed to her the location of my older brother's soft porn collection I could undoubtedly have saved myself several years worth of Chinese burns.
As an adult, however, a certain amount of nastiness has almost become a necessity to get ahead, especially when you are a writer.
Hone Harawira, Paul Holmes and Michael Laws regularly propel themselves from the bowels of the Sunday papers right on to the front page after some particularly controversial or tasteless sideswipe.
Being the well-mannered (if not well-spoken) young lady that I was brought up to be, the most offensive thing I seem to have managed to do lately was publicly confess to getting sunburnt. A dear reader thoughtfully found the time to write to the editor suggesting I ought to have kept such irresponsible behaviour to myself, bless them.
Even my recent attempts to clean up my already sparkling act by swearing less frequently earned me an uncommon request from the editor to tone down the symbols I had used in place of swear words.
While other writers grow their profile and readership over swipes at the Maori underclass and others hit back with equally sharp barbs about white supremacists, it seems my public image is such that it won't even tolerate symbols in lieu of swearing.
A lifetime of being Little Miss Sunshine and many years spent writing a column from this perspective has left me with a distinct streak of dirty inside which really needs to get out.
Once terrified of offending people and always ready to play peacemaker for the greater good, I now find myself being a b-atch like the best of them and openly touting for enemies.
The disappointing thing is that when you go looking for them they are remarkably easy to find. Poor service, a bad attitude, lack of integrity and general underperformance appear to be national sports in this country, and unlike everything else, ones we could actually get a gold in. The only change in the rules of the game lately is that now I am marking up penalties.
The sense of shock people register when informed they have dropped the ball only reinforces the fact that for too long we have been indulging bad behaviour. Absurdly, it is the person who complains about slack service at a restaurant who is generally considered rude, and we live in a dichotomous world where failures are acceptable but pointing them out simply isn't.
I am not only rejecting my mother's wisdom to keep my trap shut but I am encouraging everyone else around me to do so. Next time someone makes your blood boil and your good protestant upbringing prompts you to bite your tongue, let rip. It feels so deliciously nice to be nasty.