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Ten months ago I wrote a post called why you need to write like a bad girl. I was groping towards a connection between ‘badness’, writing, and authenticity. Except I didn’t realize this until I read a book (for a nonfiction project I’m working on) called THE CURSE OF THE GOOD GIRL by Rachel Simmons.
(By the way, from some of the responses I got, it became clear to me that men could relate to that post as well. The details might differ, but the struggle to connect with your creative self, your Voice, your spirit, your essential self, whatever you want to call it, is the same for both sexes. Which is why I think creativity is akin to spirituality and why, although I identify myself as an atheist, I’m on as much of a spiritual quest as anyone. But I digress. For I tend to do that.)
In her research, Simmons asked largely middle-class groups of girls to “describe how society expected a Good Girl to look and act.” A sample response indicated that a “Good Girl” gets good grades and has lots of friends. She’s pretty and kind (and generally blonde and blue-eyed).
She also aims to please (“people pleaser”), toes the line (“no opinions on things”) and doesn’t take risks (“follows the rules”). She denies certain negative emotions, especially anger (“doesn’t get mad”) and fears mistakes and failure (“has to do everything right”).
Simmons:
The Good Girl walked a treacherous line, balancing mixed messages about how far she should go and how strong she should be: she was to be “enthusiastic” while being “quiet”; “smart” with “no opinions on things”; “intelligent” but a “follower”; “popular” but “quiet”. She would be something, but not too much.
Compare that to the girls’ descriptions of “bad girls”.
A Bad Girl is “the picture of female failure, a reckless rejection of femininity, everything a girl was told not to be. She was the odd girl out with a bad reputation, low to no status, and few friends…”
Yet she was also independent and authentic. The Bad Girl was outspoken (“speaks her mind”) and self-possessed (“proud”), a risk taker (“rule breaker”) and critical thinker (“artistic”, “rebel”, “doesn’t care what people think”). She was comfortable being in charge (“center of attention”). But she was nothing if not an outcast, an example to Good Girls of what happened when you strayed from the program. Being Bad was social suicide: a big red F in Girl.
What Simmons doesn’t get into here is that the word ‘bad’, when applied to a girl, also means ‘sexually active’. As Leora Tanenbaum points out, at length and in the incredibly convincing argument that is her book SLUT!: Growing up Female with a Bad Reputation, the word ‘slut’ is a shaming device used by girls (as well as boys) against girls who don’t conform to the feminine ideal, whether or not they’re actually promiscuous (often they aren’t). They might be too physically developed too soon, or the wrong ethnicity, or the wrong class; they might be too rebellious, too much of an outsider, too curious, too experimental; they might be too pretty, too “hot”, too much of a threat in the race for desirable boyfriends (and thus deemed “too conceited” and in need of being cut down). In other words, a slut – a bad girl – defies the Good Girl rule of you will be something, but not too much.
A Bad Girl is too much.
So you police her. You punish her. You reduce her to the essential dirty evil horrible badness of female sexuality (a.k.a. that great threat to Western civilization, responsible for destroying men and laying waste to entire kingdoms since the beginning of time).
I find it interesting, this link between sexuality and voice. Your authentic voice is your creative self: it is you, what you think and how you think and what you believe and how you choose to express those beliefs (through paint or writing or academic work or starting up your own company, whatever medium best engages the innate creative intelligence
