Majo Molfino - Break the Good Girl Myth

For my mother and her mother and her mother...

Dont ask me what I did. Ask me what I did not do. I did not clip her wings, and thats all.

ZIAUDDIN YOUSAFZAI, Malala Yousafzais father

Contents

IVE MOSTLY DRAWN ON MY OWN LIFE AND THOSE OF MY CLIENTS and friends, as well as my podcast guests and listeners, to show how the good girl archetype exists. The details of my clients lives have been rearranged, changed, or merged into composite personas in an effort to anonymize them. Though the women included in this book represent a small slice of the world, I believe the good girl is universal and speaks to women from a wide range of experiences and walks of life. My hope is that you see parts of yourself reflected here, regardless of how you identify or where you come from as a woman.

S ITTING ON MY DESK IS A PHOTOGRAPH OF MYSELF AT AGE twelve. It was my first day at an all-girls Catholic high school in Montreal, Canada. I stood at the bottom of a stairwell, gripping the straps of my backpack. I wore a plaid blue-green skirt, and my black shoes were so impeccably polished that you could see the camera flash in them. My hair was tied back in the tightest of ponytails. Doing this was my effort to fit in more and to make the other girls like me. I was a very good girl.

I was a daughter of immigrants and a straight A+ student, but underneath this perfect, good girl persona was a darker truth: I didnt know where I belonged. Though I was born in Buenos Aires, I couldnt tell you on what street or in which neighborhood we lived, or about the smell of leather and cigarettes that flooded the kiosks, because my parents decided to immigrate to Canada when I was only a baby. I cant speak Spanish more than conversationally, and I have trouble remembering some very basic words. While my aunts, uncles, and grandmothers still live in Argentina, I didnt grow up with them and generally felt disconnected from my roots, language, culture, and community.

In my childhood years, I caved in to peer pressures and wanted desperately to be like my blonde, blue-eyed Canadian friends with perfectly Englishsounding names like Allison and Rebecca. I was embarrassed that my parents spoke English with a heavy accent (worrying that people thought we were stupid) and that we didnt know what sleepovers and Halloween were, customs we didnt have in Argentina. I hated being teased about my full name, Maria Jos. Kids would often taunt No way, Jos! No way, Jos! or my friends parents would break out into the song Maria from West Side Story, a reference I little knew or cared about.

I was different, and I felt it. Though I had loving parents, by the time I was fifteen, I had attended ten different schools and lived in at least six different houses and towns in Canada and the United States. Put plainly, being a good, determined, high-achieving daughter of immigrants was my safest way to assimilate and cope with the ineffable loss, grief, and lack of belonging and connection I felt in my heart.

Thats a Good Girl

Theres something instantly recognizable about the good girl, isnt there? Shes the girl in a schoolgirl uniform. Shes the girl who plays classical piano or practices ballet for years at the insistence of her parents. Shes the girl who wins the spelling bee. Shes the girl who does her homework. Shes the girl who is sweet, nave, and docile. Theres a reason these images come to mind when we think of her. Its because shes truly familiar and universal. Its because our society has conditioned too many of us to believe that we will be rewarded only when we are being nice, playing by the rules, and working hard.

While its true that the good girl is a universal phenomenon, its also true that you have your own unique good girl journey. Whether youve considered yourself a typical good girl in the past or not, I assure you that we all have glimpses of her within us. For me, the good girl manifested herself primarily through my performance at school and, later in life, through my performance at work. But I also wanted boys to love me, giving me the attention and approval I desperately craved. As a teenager, when I got attention from popular boys in schoolyou know, the bad boys, troublemakers, and class clownsit led me into some seriously bad relationships, even into my twenties (more on that later).

For you, the good girl will find her own unique expression. But for all of us, her roots can be traced back to a common source: the patriarchy. Like armor or a mask, the good girl archetype is a protective mechanism, a way to be that helps us feel safe and loved in the patriarchy but that is ultimately disempowering.

Whats the patriarchy? That old thing is a (very annoying) social and cultural system that privileges men, in visible and invisible ways, over women and other genders. Its pretty much everywhere, like the air we breathe and the water we drink. Under its foot, we become good girls who compromise our needs and desires in order to survive, fit in, and be accepted, paying the price by giving up our fulfillment and power. Indeed, the good girl is that domesticated part of ourselves that has been tamed and trained by this system over our entire lifetime and perhaps even over multiple generations of women in our families. When we embody her, we play it safe, hold back our voices, and dont share our true gifts with the world.

The Patriarchy

Ive found that the word feminism, like patriarchy, has gained a bad reputationnot surprisingly, in the patriarchy! As one podcast listener told me, Im allergic to that word. I think of an angry feminist who burns bras and points her finger at men, when the issue is a lot more complicated. It just feels accusatory. Steering clear of words like feminism and patriarchy makes our good girl feel safe, since we arent ruffling any bow ties. Lets make sure were all on the same page about what I mean when I say patriarchy, which will give context for understanding the good girl.

The patriarchy is a system of oppression. Oppression is unjust treatment and control by anotherwhether its an individual, a group, or an entire social and cultural system. A key assumption of this book is that were born into cultures that oppress us based on specific factors, such as gender, race, and economic status. There are more, but well keep this simple for our purposes. In many parts of the world, girls and women continue to be oppressed and denied their rights to education or health care or are forced into labor or the sex trade. In the United States, Latina, Native American, and Black women are paid far less than are white non-Hispanic men for the exact same work.

Some forms of oppression are obvious and loud, some are subtle and quiet, but either way, they exist. The opposite of oppression is freedom, power, and choice. The opposite of being oppressed is having privilege. When I first heard someone call me privileged, I became defensive, but I soon came to see they were right: being white, wealthier than most, and able-bodied gave me more privilege than those without these qualities and affordances. I discovered I was not only in the oppressed category as a woman but also in the oppressor category as a woman with privilege. This can feel like an uncomfortable pill to swallow, but doing this type of internal work is often uncomfortable, so gear up. Each and every one of us oppresses and is oppressed. Its good to own both sides because then we can see the ways we are deeply hurt (by the patriarchy, obviously) and the ways we unconsciously hurt others by having more privilege and power.

The patriarchy is inside you. Are you surprised by this? Many women think the patriarchy is something imposed on them externally, but whenever we live inside a system that oppresses us, that system lives inside us too. We begin to internalize its messages (more on messengers later) and often mistake those messages for our own thoughts. Our inner patriarchs direct a portion of our subconscious thoughts, words, and behaviors, which stop us from becoming our authentic selves. The main premise of this book is that the patriarchy is inside you and manifests as the good girl, but you can do something about it and reclaim your power.