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Authors: Beverly Engel
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friends, and [would] turn their backs on them.”
44 T HE N ICE G IRL S YNDROME
False Belief #4: If I Am Good and Perfect, I Will Be Accepted and Loved
For many years, girls were raised to believe that if they were “good,” if they minded their parents and did what was expected of them at school, they would in turn be accepted and loved by others. This “sugar and spice and everything nice” mind-set continues into the present in some circles (for example, conservative or deeply religious homes). In these environments, girls are supposed to be sweet and caring, little caregivers in training.
In Odd Girl Out , Rachel Simmons cites a 1994 article in Schoolgirls , in which journalist Peggy Orenstein wrote: “A good girl is nice before she is anything else—before she is vigorous, bright, even before she is honest.” She described the “perfect girl” as: “The girl who has no bad thoughts or feelings, the kind of person every- one wants to be with. . . . [She is] the girl who speaks quietly, calmly, who is always nice and kind, never mean or bossy. . . . She reminds young women to silence themselves rather than speak their true feel- ings, which they come to consider ‘stupid,’ ‘selfish,’ ‘rude,’ or just plain irrelevant.”
After talking to hundreds of girls for her research project on girls and aggression, Simmons found that the girls she interviewed expressed their exasperation at being expected to be nice all the time and to be nice to everyone. One girl expressed her frustration like this: “They expect us to act like girls back in the 1800s!” Another said, “They expect you to be perfect. . . . When boys do bad things, they all know they’re going to do bad stuff. When girls do it, they yell at them.” Still another said, “They expect you to be perfect angels and then sometimes we don’t want to be considered a perfect angel.”
Some parents also instill in their children the belief that they have to be perfect. When my mother was alive, she sometimes told me this story: One day, as she dropped me off at the babysitter’s and gave me her usual admonishment—“Now you be good for Mrs. Jones today”—I turned to her and said, “I have to be good for Mrs. Jones, I have to be good for you, I have to be good for my teachers, I have to be good at church. When can I be bad?”
My mother always laughed when she told this story, since in many ways she loved my being precocious. But I doubt that she truly
T HE T EN F ALSE B ELIEFS T HAT S ET W OMEN U P 45
appreciated what I was trying to tell her—that I felt too much pres- sure to be good and perfect.
False Belief #5: If I Act Naive and Innocent, People Will Take Care of Me and I Won’t Have to Grow Up
It used to be that the payoff for being sweet and nice was that one was taken care of and protected by the men and authority figures in one’s life. Girls and women were perceived as weaker and in need of protection from the “big, bad world” and boys and men took on the responsibility of making sure that nothing bad happened to them. But those days are gone, along with chivalry and manners. Most boys and men today do not feel responsible for protecting girls; in fact, many view girls and women as objects to be exploited. Today, partly due to the popularity of rap music in which girls and women are denigrated and called bitches, boys and men often view girls and women as mere sex objects.
Recently a story on the news related one more case in which sev- eral boys raped a girl at a party. As is so often the prelude to such vio- lence, the girl had been drinking too much and had passed out. Instead of the boys’ feeling protective of her, they took advantage of the situation. To make matters worse, they videotaped the gang rape and showed it to their friends the next day.
This doesn’t mean that there aren’t men who like taking on the role of provider and protector. But these men are not necessarily throwbacks to an earlier
44 T HE N ICE G IRL S YNDROME
False Belief #4: If I Am Good and Perfect, I Will Be Accepted and Loved
For many years, girls were raised to believe that if they were “good,” if they minded their parents and did what was expected of them at school, they would in turn be accepted and loved by others. This “sugar and spice and everything nice” mind-set continues into the present in some circles (for example, conservative or deeply religious homes). In these environments, girls are supposed to be sweet and caring, little caregivers in training.
In Odd Girl Out , Rachel Simmons cites a 1994 article in Schoolgirls , in which journalist Peggy Orenstein wrote: “A good girl is nice before she is anything else—before she is vigorous, bright, even before she is honest.” She described the “perfect girl” as: “The girl who has no bad thoughts or feelings, the kind of person every- one wants to be with. . . . [She is] the girl who speaks quietly, calmly, who is always nice and kind, never mean or bossy. . . . She reminds young women to silence themselves rather than speak their true feel- ings, which they come to consider ‘stupid,’ ‘selfish,’ ‘rude,’ or just plain irrelevant.”
After talking to hundreds of girls for her research project on girls and aggression, Simmons found that the girls she interviewed expressed their exasperation at being expected to be nice all the time and to be nice to everyone. One girl expressed her frustration like this: “They expect us to act like girls back in the 1800s!” Another said, “They expect you to be perfect. . . . When boys do bad things, they all know they’re going to do bad stuff. When girls do it, they yell at them.” Still another said, “They expect you to be perfect angels and then sometimes we don’t want to be considered a perfect angel.”
Some parents also instill in their children the belief that they have to be perfect. When my mother was alive, she sometimes told me this story: One day, as she dropped me off at the babysitter’s and gave me her usual admonishment—“Now you be good for Mrs. Jones today”—I turned to her and said, “I have to be good for Mrs. Jones, I have to be good for you, I have to be good for my teachers, I have to be good at church. When can I be bad?”
My mother always laughed when she told this story, since in many ways she loved my being precocious. But I doubt that she truly
T HE T EN F ALSE B ELIEFS T HAT S ET W OMEN U P 45
appreciated what I was trying to tell her—that I felt too much pres- sure to be good and perfect.
False Belief #5: If I Act Naive and Innocent, People Will Take Care of Me and I Won’t Have to Grow Up
It used to be that the payoff for being sweet and nice was that one was taken care of and protected by the men and authority figures in one’s life. Girls and women were perceived as weaker and in need of protection from the “big, bad world” and boys and men took on the responsibility of making sure that nothing bad happened to them. But those days are gone, along with chivalry and manners. Most boys and men today do not feel responsible for protecting girls; in fact, many view girls and women as objects to be exploited. Today, partly due to the popularity of rap music in which girls and women are denigrated and called bitches, boys and men often view girls and women as mere sex objects.
Recently a story on the news related one more case in which sev- eral boys raped a girl at a party. As is so often the prelude to such vio- lence, the girl had been drinking too much and had passed out. Instead of the boys’ feeling protective of her, they took advantage of the situation. To make matters worse, they videotaped the gang rape and showed it to their friends the next day.
This doesn’t mean that there aren’t men who like taking on the role of provider and protector. But these men are not necessarily throwbacks to an earlier
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