Kim Ji-Young, Born 1982: How to Be Gracefully Assertive Without Losing Your Mind
[photo from IMDb]
I teach my coaching clients a concept called Graceful Assertiveness.
(By the way, my colleague Sade Curry and I led an open session called Gracefully Assertive At Work and In Relationships for Women Who’ve Been Told They’re Too Much, and you can watch the replay here.)
And here’s the thing about it.
It requires extending an ocean of grace back to ourselves as we do the courageous work of undoing generations of conditioning. Conditioning that taught women to feel like, and accept being treated like, and paid like second-class citizens.
Recently, a Korean film, Kim Ji-Young, Born 1982, reminded me exactly why.
Ji-Young is a former marketing professional, whose high quality work was praised by her boss. She's now a wife and stay-at-home mom whose days disappear into housework and her two-year-old daughter.
The scene that had me in tears:
It's New Year's holiday, and she's at her mother-in-law's, worked to exhaustion in the kitchen from dawn to night, because the women toiling away to feed the extended family is “tradition.”
Just as she thinks she can finally go home, her sister-in-law arrives and crashes the party. The mother-in-law, who'd been rather cold to Ji-Young, lights up with affection.
Then in a moment, something breaks. Ji-Young's timid expression is replaced by a stern, otherworldly look. She addresses her MIL as sabuin, the Korean word a bride's mother would use to address the groom's mother, peer to peer.
Ji-Young addresses the MIL, not as herself, but as her own mother, defending her daughter and saying it would only be fair for her own daughter to be allowed to go home, now. She's worked enough.
The room is stunned into silence. Her husband, panicked, rushes Ji-Young and their daughter to the car.
The thing is...
Ji-Young's story is the story of millions and millions of women around the world for whom Gracefully Assertive feels like a farfetched dream.
So impossible that it's as if a full mental disassociation is required. Advocating for themselves seems to require leaving their bodies and becoming an entirely different person who is beyond punishment.
It could have easily been my story, too, as a person born a girl in South Korea to a mom who encountered abuse from her husband's family because she had three daughters and no sons.
It hit home, hard.
You ready for a spoiler?
The movie ends well.
Ji-Young learns to be whole again. And how do we know?
There's an accident involving her toddler and a cup of iced Americano at a coffeeshop, while a long line of people look on from behind them.
As Ji-Young is frantically wiping up the spilled coffee on the floor, a group of cruel adults pass judgment on her audibly.
This time Ji-Young stays in her body. She speaks up for herself. But it's not a heated argument. Her face is neutral. She states the facts plainly, and the judge-y adults rush out, embarrassed for themselves.
And here's the part that matters. When she tells the story afterward, she says she did not feel bad or good. It just was.
That is the heart of Graceful Assertiveness. It is not combative. It is not the passive posture that plays the victim. It is staying present long enough to simply state the facts and trust your own instincts for what is appropriate and what is not.
Yes, Ji-Young is a fictional character, but she could be you. She could be me. My mother, and the hundreds of women I know.
We can become whole. We can stay present in our bodies. We can extend grace to ourselves and heal generations of societal harm, simply by speaking up for ourselves.
Not with heat. Not with apology. Just plainly, the way Ji-Young did in that café. Stating what is, and trusting ourselves to know the difference.
And what's true in that café is true in every room that matters. The boardroom. The industry meetup. The conversation where you make the case for your promotion. Graceful Assertiveness belongs in all of them. Because you belong there, too.
If this is the work you're ready for, let's do it together. Book a free consultation with me, and we'll co-create a coaching plan built just for you. One that helps you stay present, aware, and able to advocate for yourself with ease. Without becoming someone you're not.