Don’t Be the Good Girl
On the eve of my 42nd birthday, and since absolutely no one asked, I thought I’d share the biggest piece of advice that I wish I could give my younger self: Don’t be the good girl.
First, after the age of 18, be a woman. Feel free to be a woman that loves pink ruffles or hair bows or fairies but be a woman. “Girl” should be reserved for actual girls — the young, twirling kind that populates elementary schools and the teenagers sulking about parties they can’t go to or playing on phones. Girls (and boys) need our guidance and protection as they grapple with changing bodies and hormones and attention.
But as we usher men into a position of authority, let’s do the same with women. Women (and men) still need guidance and protection, but they can do so better on a more even playing field. So, let’s have girls and boys and women and men, but never girls and men (in more ways than one). If “woman” is too much while “girl” is less threatening or more innocent or “sweeter,” well then, I’d rather be too much.
Second, be kind or compassionate or brave or badass, but there’s no need to be “good” by anyone’s standards but your own. You are already good. (Read that again.) No one should have to meet anyone else’s expectations to prove they are good. *
Last, the biggest problem with anyone else’s definition of a “good girl” is that it’s always changing. Fall short of whatever sexual politics are demanded by a particular situation, and you’ll be a tease or a slut, a prude or a whore. Be confident without getting too big of a head. Don’t play dumb, but never be a snob.
You will waste precious years trying to live in gray areas you never wanted to belong.
Good girls can’t win, and there’s no gold star at the end of it all for trying, over and over again, to twist and turn yourself into something they can’t find fault with anyway. They will always find a flaw, so live by your rules, not theirs.
Good girls make even better wild women, so be one of those, however you, and only you, choose to define it.
*Psychopaths excluded, but I think we all know psychopaths aren’t reading overly reflective writing by middle-aged women.