How not to be a good girl!

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How not to be a good girl

It has occurred to me that I have spent my life being a good girl and in fact I was a bad one. Cause I did not like traditions, I did not like so much the conservative environment I lived in. It always bothered me how men were more privileged than women and how men were called nothing when women were called whores. It was normal for men to drink and smoke but for women not. A good girl would not drink, yet would not drink even coffee. A good woman would build the house, make the house, without a woman a man was not able to do his own chores. How to be a good girl was of utmost importance.

It was given so much importance that even women would mock the bad girls. Girls had to get married before they opened their eyes. A girl should not have studied too much… a woman’s place is near her children right? Then well of course I will not tell you what people thought about premarital relations so on and so forth. The list of being a good girl was equal to being obedient and the list of being a bad girl was quite long.

Obedient to what? Obedient to religion, obedient to elderly, obedient to husband, obedient to customs, traditions, what being a good girl or woman constitute of.

Sometimes it is possible to see that the work life treats women as if they are from a small town. In some work life, we see the mentality of villages, even in the most professional places. Most of the time women are paid less than men (research), and it also shows that women (are forced to) accept these roles. Women are not given jobs at an age where they might be pregnant. What an equal world? Women are more disadvantageous when they come back from maternity leave. They need to hide their children as much as they had to do, when they hid their vaginas. So it is very weird, that women are internally turbulent, furious and anxious when all these things happen to them from family life to work life and we find ourselves saying: all the world is a village.

Moreover, the solidarity amongst women is very low. Possible games are played as if we are adolescents and there are groups that dislike or mislike or hate someone and that someone is to be excluded. Hypocrisy is in place if a woman is different from others for any kind of reason. The solidarity is in decline not only in workers’ lifeworld but also in many of the work places.

I have observed from my own experience that, being good is not being obedient. I have learnt that being good is being good to someone although that person is not so good to you. Being good is not an easy thing, it is something that you do cause you are good, that is it. And that you want to be good as a human, from a humanistic perspective. It is not something that you create from the bottom of your mind just because you think that a good girl would behave like that in this or that society, being good is being good in purest form. And being bad has nothing to do with those lists that are mentioned by small villages, traditions, men, families, work places… being good is empathy and showing friendship when one is in difficulty. Listening to a friend, understanding when someone is in need but calling that person also when she or he isn’t in need. Being good is understanding migrants, understanding others, understanding how we might have hurt other people via our actions. Being good is self-reflection. It is not that hard, it is just a bit self-sacrificial. Let us be good people not good girls. Cause a good girl or a good boy, is just a societal construct and it will be understood very differently 100 years from now on. And we will need to save the world from all the hazards we caused, and then those who have protected the trees and animals and other humans from harm will be the best of all regardless of their gender, not because they were obedient. Sometimes you need to be disobedient to be good.