Woman hands out 'boy poison' note about embracing femininity at work

A woman has been handing out an empowering note in London's Kings Cross station to encourage women and girls to embrace their femininity in the workplace.

Twenty-year-old art director Sophia Tassew handed passersby at the station a handwritten message entitled "Boy Poison," which listed a series of instructions for being a dominant female. Tassew says the idea for the note "stemmed from working in environments that are dominated by men" and from being told to behave in a certain way at work.

"Give them direct eye contact, speak with a loud clear voice, always make sure your handshake is firm, don't apologise for talking about what you love," read the note.

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"Don't apologise for talking about what you love. Stand up for your ideas. Confuse them with embracing all forms of your femininity and dominance at the same time," the note continued.

Tassew says working in male-dominated environments resulted in her "losing confidence" in standing up for herself and her ideas. "I think a lot of women might go through a similar thing where we're not sure how to react because we've been told to behave a certain way for so long," says Tassew.

"If you speak up you're seen as too overbearing and if not people treat you like you're a fragile doll that can only do certain things," she continues. She says it's "almost as if" people don't know how to handle the "feminine and dominant part of a woman," which she finds really confusing.

She says she chose to write about eye contact and verbal communication because she believes it has a "massive effect" on "how you're portrayed as a person" and how you make "your mark wherever you are."

Tassew named the note "Boy Poison" after seeing the name scribbled somewhere when she was researching Zines last year and she thought it had a nice ring to it. "I just wanted to write something out of a frustration but mostly a place from love. I guess some men feel insecure about really confident women. It's almost like kryptonite. Almost poison for some," says Tassew.

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From her note Tassew says she wants women to gain "reassurance that they're not alone and we're in this together."

She says overall the note was met with 95 percent positivity. "The other 5 percent comes from older men who seem to think this is some kind of spell that actually creates poison lol," says Tassew. But, at the same time, she also received emails and messages from men to show their support for the note.

Since handing out the note, she's received around 200 messages from women all over saying they "needed" the note. "I actually had a lot of senior women in the creative industry tell me they can totally relate," she says.