Photo credit: http://amazingasset.com

In case you didn’t know, giving the side eye is a true art (check out this hilariously true post from For Harriet). If you’ve ever come in close contact with a side eye, you’ve felt it cut through you like your mama’s final disciplinary warning. It’s that chastising, effective yet brief side glance that makes you understand we “ain’t playing no more”. It’s the cousin of the eye roll, except it’s clothed in less revealing, aggressive clothing, but just as effective…In other words, you’ve been “read”, silently, effectively, and probably without recourse…

At work, it’s women’s, and minority and Black women’s in particular, way of dealing with all the mini and macro-ways we are stopped in our tracks, silenced or just plain ignored. The side eye is there to say what words are sometimes not enough, or often too much, to express. In other words, instead of telling you how we really feel about that obnoxious email (or throwing a sharp object at you), we give you the side eye to say “I know what you’re doing”, or “I wouldn’t go there if I were you”…

I love me some side eye action. Done the right way, it may just be one of the most effective non-verbal cue to address most forms of disrespect at work or in life, political correctedness included…Well, judge by yourself…

The Corporate Sis.