http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rzL-vdQ3ObA
Pantene's new ad above, called "Not Sorry" and hashtagged #ShineStrong, points out a disturbingly close-to-home habit for many women: Unnecessary and constant apologies. When you ask a question, when someone else pushes against you in the subway, when someone else talks over you, the woman is always the one who quickly blurts, "Sorry." (Actually, this is the second video Pantene has released that observes how the socialization of men and women holds us back.)

At a 2013 feminism conference in London, 60 women were asked to engage in an exercise that involved introducing themselves to each other while touching the other woman's elbows or knees — without saying sorry, smiling apologetically or showing any remorse about getting in someone else's personal space, responding simply by saying "No, I'm not going to do that."

One participant, The Telegraph's Radhika Sanghani, writes, "It sounds easy enough, but as I stop and say, 'No,' all I want to do is add 'sorry' as a suffix. I don't even know what it is I'm apologising for." The other women are equally uncomfortable.

A study out of the University of Ontario found that men don't necessarily not apologize because of some macho crap — they simply don't think they've instigated a reason to apologize as often as we do. "It seems to be that when they think they've done something wrong they do apologize just as frequently as when women think they've done something wrong," said one researcher. "It's just that they think they've done fewer things wrong."

All together now: Let's stop apologizing so much!

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Photo Credit: Pantene