FKA Twigs Reads Ask Polly

Some thoughts on the perils of being too nice.

I granted free permission to Letters Live to use this chapter from my 2016 book, How to Be a Person in the World. They didn’t tell me who would read it.

I am not disappointed!

I want to share this with everyone because whew, it’s good. I was skeptical at first (as always!) and I was crying by the end. A moving reminder that being nice on the surface while suffering behind closed doors is no way to live!

Here’s the ironic part (though it has a happy ending!):

The message behind this letter and response is that you have to be direct and assertive with other people, particularly if you’re a woman. You can’t passively agree to conditions that aren’t okay with you.

I asked Letters Live to include credit for my work at the start of any performance and in any video they put online, and to include the url for Ask Polly in the introduction to the performance and in any accompanying text. They resisted including the url; I pushed back and they finally agreed to it. I also requested that they let me know when the video went up online. When it comes to getting credit for my work, I have learned to be clear and detailed!

Nevertheless, these conditions were not honored. Not only wasn’t I invited to this event, which I thought was odd, I also wasn’t informed that the video went up — I stumbled across it on someone else’s Substack last week. When I asked the permissions contact at Letters Live last week to add a link to Ask Polly, I received no reply.

The lesson here is that even when you’re very direct and you clearly and professionally state your conditions, other people — very professional, very polite people! — will often pretend to comply and then do whatever they want. They will forget what they promised you whenever it’s convenient to do so. (Update: Letters Live reached out to apologize. They’re currently updating the video so that it identifies Ask Polly as the source of the letter and response. They’ve also said that they’re taking my feedback to heart and they’re going to change some aspects of their permissions process moving forward. They were extremely nice about all of this and I’m very grateful to them for hearing me out!)

A very similar story: When my first memoir, Disaster Preparedness, was published, I had my agent stipulate that I would have a chance to audition to read the audio version. I figured of course they’d want the author to read her own memoir! Instead, the audio book producer listened to a clip of an NPR piece I did and independently decided to hire someone else — someone with a cheerful, Disney-princess voice. I wasn’t notified until after the book was recorded.

My agent at the time shrugged and said we should choose our battles. My editor at the time ignored my phone calls and emailed that it was out of her hands.

The moral here is that you can be assertive, direct, and honest. You can put everything in writing. You can enlist professional help. But things might still go very wrong, and when push comes to shove, you might discover that the helpers you’ve hired aren’t very helpful at all, and the collaborators you’ve chosen don’t see it as a collaboration after all. They want their lives to be easy, they need certain other relationships to remain intact, and if it’s more convenient for them to convince you that the problem is YOU, that’s the path they’ll choose.

And — THIS PART IS IMPORTANT, SO LISTEN UP! — if you struggle to express your emotions, or you grew up being told that the problem is you, you will often give up and, through tears of rage, give in.

That’s what I did back then. But I’m not like that anymore.

So I’m sharing this story instead. I’m not about to enlist a lawyer, it’s too expensive and too aggravating to go down that path, and this situation is just too trivial. BUT I do have to share both the video (YES!!!) and the story behind it (NO!!!), because it’s so instructive, and so ludicrously on-theme.

Vowing to be LESS NICE includes calling people out when they don’t honor their agreements. You don’t work as hard as you do just to give your work away, or to shrug when people who were hired to have your back don’t do so. You honor your work by standing up for your work! You honor yourself (and other creative people who are more vulnerable than you are) by standing up for yourself!

That’s why it’s so important to know your own heart, to have clarity about your needs and desires, to learn to stay calm and speak directly under awkward circumstances. Because you must cultivate COURAGE OF CONVICTION UNDER PRESSURE.

Throughout your life, you have to keep learning how to tell people the truth directly. You can’t panic about sounding harsh or seeming unlikable. You need to know how to ask for what you want. And from time to time, you have to confront people when they’re careless or negligent.

The more calm you can be as you do these things, the less likely you are to be disrespected, taken for granted, demeaned, and ignored. But believe me — and I’ll bet FKA Twigs will back me up on this — you will still be disrespected, taken for granted, demeaned, and ignored. REGULARLY.

Even when you have an established career and a name in your business. Even when you’re famous like Twigs. Even when you’re surrounded by an army of professional helpers. People will say they didn’t know, or they misplaced your contract, or mistakes were made. People will tell you “That’s not how it works” even when you have it in writing. People will avoid you and then talk shit about what a pain in the ass you were to work with — just for *calmly, clearly, and politely* standing up for your rights.

That’s discouraging, I know. But it’s all the more reason why you have to learn to have your own back instead of letting your shame and your intense emotions warp your view.

Don’t surrender to shame. When people misunderstand you, ignore you, gaslight you, or tell inaccurate stories about you?

Say something. Or, as I put it back in 2016:

“How many years do we have to wait just to speak our minds? Let’s be flinty and unreasonable instead. Let’s tell the truth, without a smile. Let’s let our words drop, one by one, without explanation, without apology, like the first few pebbles before a landslide.”

Make that hiss at the end of FKA Twigs’ performance your official vibe for 2025 and your mantra for the rest of your life.

You will require that ferocity. Instead of fearing it, relish it.

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Thanks for reading and supporting Ask Polly! And thanks to Letters Live for welcoming feedback and updating their video so quickly!