I’ve Become That Annoying Woman Who Challenges Everything
But I wonder if anything less will bring about the kind of change we need
When I was a little girl, one of my favorite words was “gypped.” I loved the way Hayley Mills said it in The Parent Trap — it had such a strong ring to it. So I imitated her, dropping this word whenever I felt someone had done me wrong.
As a teenager, I discovered that “gypped” was an ethnic slur. The “gyp” was referring to gypsies, and the term had come about to frame them as untrustworthy people. I was horrified that I’d been using this word so capriciously and immediately had a talk with my younger siblings about it.
“We have to stop using this word,” I told them. “It’s offensive.”
My parents, when I told them at the dinner table one night, said they had had no idea what that word meant and were shocked that its usage was so commonplace.
“We have to stop using this word,” I told them. “It’s offensive.”
Years later, I found out that even the word “gypsy” is commonly perceived as an ethnic slur. It is an “exonym” — a name given to a ethnic group by people outside that group. It refers to the Romani people, from northern India, whose skin tone led others to…
