This summer, I came across Pantene's ad campaign entitled "Sorry, Not Sorry".The premise is that women in their daily lives apologize more than they need to. Rather than apologizing for our every move, we should be stronger and more confident with ourselves. These ads made me realize that I have been doing just that, and that I need to stop and encourage others to do the same.

I was raised with good manners: I always say 'thank you' when the door is held for me, 'please' when I am ordering food at a restaurant, and of course 'sorry' for mistakes I've made. But looking back on the past couple things I have apologized for, they are not mistakes at all. Sometimes, they are other people's mistakes. I have apologized for everything from a sandwich shop messing up my order to reminding my roommates to pay me their share of the utilities. I don't have direct control over these events, but I still find myself feeling guilty and apologizing. So what is the difference between being polite and over-apologizing?

To find an answer, I went to Google and found numerous responses from major news outlets. The article from TIME magazine, "I'm Sorry, but Women Really Need To Stop Apologizing" by Jessica Bennett is what really helped me understand this apologizing phenomenon. Bennett describes the word sorry as just a space filler in a conversation in order to avoid being rude or offensive. But how often it is used by women in particular? Maybe the word "sorry" is losing its value as a way to apologize for a mistake and is just being used as a filler word in conversation, much like women tend to use the word 'like' all the time. 

I am not sure if it is a feminist issue or a problem with my generation itself, or maybe even both, but we need to stop over-apologizing. So for the next couple weeks, I am challenging myself to think twice before throwing out the word "sorry", and make sure that I am not apologizing for something that is not my fault and out of my control. I'm saving "sorry" for the right reason.