"Good Girl" Pressures
By Tayler, age 16, California
We so-called "good girls" hear it every day: "She's never done anything bad a day in her life." But that's not actually how we feel inside. We feel the pressure to meet the ideal standards of the girl the world wants us to be. I know that I am not perfect, nor as good as everybody seems to think I am. I have done things I am not proud of, and some things I regret.
The "good girls" you see every day do have problems in their lives. Yeah, maybe they are smart, pretty, skinny, and overall over-achievers, but it doesn't mean they do not have feelings too. In my experience, being called a "good girl" has sometimes made me block out my own personal feelings because I've felt that they don't meet society's expectations, what others want me to be.
Blocking out my emotions made me explode once, and it isn't pretty when we "good girls" have a breakdown because we don't know how to use our emotions, as we have learned to hold them back. I broke down one day because I did something wrong, and I couldn't handle all the looks that seemed to shout, "You're not supposed to do that. You're perfect, sweet, and innocent. You don't act like that."
In reality, I have a hard time speaking my mind, and when someone verbally attacks me, I don't really know how to respond. I have never learned how to verbally defend myself, so my mind usually just shuts down and I stand in place, frozen in time, while being verbally attacked. I cannot defend myself because I have never been cruel or mean to anyone. I am afraid to hurt people, afraid to say something terrible, and I feel that I would never be able to get those words out of my mouth.
Sometimes we "good girls" just wish we could escape to a place where we didn't have to meet the criteria of society around us. We have feelings too. We are human, and most definitely we would like not to be discriminated against.
Give us good girls a chance. We will surprise you, and once you really get to know us, you will know that we aren't really as "good" as we appear to be.
