Why are Women Like Me Called Scary?

Here's the real reason we side-eye the women who won't shrink

Not all mirrors reflect what’s real. Some demand we see what we’ve been avoiding.

“I thought you’d be a battle-axe,” she said. “But you’re… soft. Lovely, even.”

An executive assistant. Smart. Sharp. Her words weren’t meant to wound—they were meant to confess. She was surprised. Shocked, not by how I spoke, or how I moved, but by who I wasn’t.

She’d built me in her mind before we’d ever met.

Armour-plated. Harsh. A corporate dominatrix.

The kind of woman who makes men sweat and women tighten their smiles.

The kind of woman we call scary. I’ll be blunt:

Women like me don’t get to be misunderstood. We are designed to be misunderstood.

If I had smiled more, softened more, bent myself into smaller shapes, they’d have called me “approachable.” If I’d wrapped my clarity in apologetic qualifiers—“just a thought!” “ignore me if this sounds mad!”—I’d have been called collaborative.

But I didn’t.

And so I get called the thing all strong women get called when we refuse to contort ourselves into likeable shapes.

Scary.

Let’s name this for what it is: a cultural reflex. A misfire of the nervous system. We are taught to fear women who will not betray themselves to keep the peace. Women who won’t laugh when something isn’t funny. Women who won’t nod when they disagree. Women who won’t decorate their intelligence to make it easier to swallow.

We call those women difficult. Intimidating. Too much. A bit full-on.

What we mean is: She saw me clearly and I wasn’t ready for that.

I’ve lost count of the people who’ve told me—weeks into working with me—“I wish I hadn’t been scared of you. I should have started sooner.”

They say it like an apology, but it’s a confession. A reckoning with something bigger. Because it wasn’t me they were afraid of.

It was the version of themselves that would be required on the other side of saying yes.

Because working with a woman who refuses to dilute herself means you can’t keep diluting either.

It means no more hiding behind roles or rhythms or martyrdom.

It means being seen—not just for your brilliance, but for your avoidance.

For your coping strategies. Your self-protection. Your unfinished grief.

That’s the real fear.

We aren’t scared of other women. We’re scared of what they activate in us.

We’re scared of who we’d have to stop being.

And for mothers, this hits even harder.

We’ve been trained to serve. To self-sacrifice. To not make anyone uncomfortable—including our clients, our bosses, our own damn families. So when a woman enters the room refusing to do that—when she refuses to apologise for her ambition, her boundaries, her insight, her full intellectual force— something breaks open. Or breaks down.

And depending on where you are in your own reckoning, that rupture will feel like threat or freedom.

Louise Bourgeois

Here’s what I know now:

Women who are called scary are often the ones who refused to abandon themselves.

And they make other people nervous because they won’t collude with the game.

They’re not the battleaxe.

They’re the mirror.

So yes—some women are scared of me. Not because I’m cruel. Not because I wield power like a weapon. But because I don’t hide it. I don’t wrap it in disclaimers. I don’t ask permission to be whole.

I am undiluted. And that threatens every system built to reward a woman who makes herself smaller.

But I’ll say this about undiluted power: it doesn’t shout. It doesn’t stomp. It doesn’t need to prove a damn thing. It just is. Quietly un-ignorable. Deeply inconvenient. And impossible to manipulate.

And maybe that’s what you’re really afraid of—not me, but what happens when you stop diluting yourself too.

Because you know the second you say yes to this kind of power—this clean, clear, undiminished truth—you’ll lose your favourite excuses. You’ll have to drop the performance. You’ll have to stop asking for approval from rooms you’ve outgrown.

You’ll have to choose yourself. Without apology. Without delay.

So if I scare you, let it be a good fear. The kind that signals you’re standing at the edge of something holy.

Don’t wait. Don’t water yourself down to feel safe.

Start now. Before the fear convinces you to settle.
Here’s to all of us, especially the scary ones.
Danusia

PS. If this piece stirred something in you, there’s a way to go deeper. A quiet invitation sits here for you.