The Good Girl Trope - Why Women Can't Win

you're like the sweet innocent girl and you know you make me sound really boring right Josh the good girl embodies our most classic idealized Notions of femininity and she always does what she's supposed to so why is she still shamed here is how to spot when a film or TV character falls into the good girl Trope she's innocent the good girl is often inexperienced and set up in opposition to more sexualized female characters craziest place you've had sex pass are you a virgin but her apparent virtue may make potential Partners Overlook her full Womanhood and

Peg her as safe and comforting compared to the dangerous and exciting bad girl she's a dreamy romantic viewing love through Rose tinted old-fashioned Disney princess glasses but it can happen people do live happily ever after she's a homebody who loves her family and enjoys traditionally womanly activities like baking or crafting I'm going to need pipe cleaners glitter glue finger paints and six different types of macaroni and that's just cuz I'm hungry she's a savior often a reforming influence for a bad boy only she can set on the straight and narrow Jamie saved my life she

taught me everything most of all she plays by the rules the good girl is nice polite and probably a straight A student yet this perfect seeming facade can mask her darker struggles even from herself you okay I'm supposed to say yes that's what the nice girl always says but no no I'm not and even though the good girl is acting exactly as her society says a woman is supposed to she's still frequently punished or looked down on for that criticized as Aude or dorky boring or not in touch with herself he always said you were

such a frigid little girl this kind of shaming sometimes makes it feel like women just can't win but today many on screen and off are reclaiming the good girl and redefining what good means based on their own rules here's our take on why it's time to stop assuming the good girl is boring repressed and start appreciating when true goodness can be greatness we are so excited to announce that we now have a line of weird girl merchandise you can now express it through t-shirts posters mugs a backpack wear it on your sleeve there's power in

owning the weird girl in all of us announce that you are the weird girl make sure to order now to get it before the holidays this video is sponsored by skillshare and online community offering thousands of classes by creative instructors right now the first 1,000 viewers to click the link in the description below will get an entire month of skillshare for free explore all kinds of classes from the path to YouTube success with Marquez brownley a creator with 13 million followers to taking perfect portraits with photographer Jessica Kobes click the link in the description to

try skillshare today the blueprint for the good girl came in the 1950s with the archetype of the American housewife the perfect Suburban Homemaker nurturer and mother who embraced her Domestic Goddess role exemplified by characters like Donna Reed The Adventures of Aussie and Harriet's Harriet Nelson and Father Knows bests Margaret Anderson these characters link female goodness to a feeling of innocence and traditional Family Values you don't know who Donna Reed is the quintessential 50s mom with the perfect 50s family never without a smile and high heels yet as time goes on stories increasingly shame good girls

for echoing that ideal society's view of the good girl is shaped by the Freudian theory of the Madonna and the [ __ ] in which he suggested that men see women as either virtuous mothers or objects of lust so while men may love and even worship the mother figure or Madonna they don't desire them and on screen the good girl is rarely seen as a sexual being a new girl J embodies old-fashioned Notions of femininity and her love of crafting and her maternal role as a well-intentioned primary school teacher but all this is linked to

a dorky inexperienced attitude towards sex which is often a punchline I was wondering if there are any trendy moves cuz uh I've been doing the same for for the last 6 years playing into the Madonna horror stereotype good girl dress is contrasted with her more sexually liberated supermodel friend CeCe she's really grabby really physical she's really loose with her body and even though both actresses playing the characters are beautiful the writing constantly tells us Jess is less attractive seemingly in large part due to her desexualized good girlness in Sex in the City Charlotte is constantly

made fun of for having Traditional Values being more ambivalent about casual sex and wanting a husband and family not only that but when she does get her feminine American dream it tellingly doesn't come with a satisfying sex life you've never had sex you've never had sex but you've been married for over a month on gr's Anatomy good girl April kepner's virginity is made fun of by the rest of the staff you're still a virgin no I'm not hey there's no shame in it really no there's a lot of Shame Black Swan makes the good girl

bad girl dichotomy more literal than ever by transplanting it onto the White Swan and Black Swan figures of Swan Lake and echoing that binary with visuals that draw extensively on black and white costumes and set dressing nah is aggressively shamed by her dance company's artistic director for being too uptight and sexually repressed to an almost absurd degree would you that girl no no one would while bad girl Lily's lack of worry or concern for rules is directly linked to the sense that she oozes sex appeal I carry a spare in case I wake up somewhere

un expected in the opening episode of Riverdale Archie is immediately taken by alluring dark-haired City girl Veronica Lodge even as the prim proper Betty is about to confess her love for him and when Betty does reveal her feelings the reason Archie gives for not seeing her in a romantic light is even that she's too perfect in good you are so perfect I've never been good enough for you I'll never be good enough for you yet while she's not sexualized the good girl's moral virtue is depicted as being a positive influence on Bad Boys she may

even be the only woman capable of reforming this guy from someone superficial promiscuous or emotionally detached into a committed partner in after the virginal Tessa is already in a stable relationship when she meets the brooding Rebel Harden and gets seduced by the mystery wrapped up in his bad boy image at every stage when Harden shows his edgier side Tessa is there for him willing to support him and also learn from him my life before him was so simple and decided in Gilmore Girls Bad Boy Jess is far more rebellious and unpredictable than Rory's more traditional

and nice first boyfriend Dean but because Rory bonds with Jess over literature she sees beyond his bad boy image to unlock the potential and sensitivity others Overlook Bridgerton Daphne molds committed Bachelor the Duke of Hastings into an honorable loving husband and in the process pretty much cures his emotional issues stemming from his childhood even Lisa Simpson Strays into a desire to be the reforming influence when she starts dating Nelson months convinced that there's more to him than the high school bully and all he needs is a sweet nice good girl to fix him very sharp

but I feel like such a tool I know it's a change but it really highlights your sweet and sensitive side this Dynamic isn't purely selfless there's also a mutuality to the good girl bad boy Trope as if it's just as important for the good girl to take some of the bad boy influence as it is for the bad boy to be formed gree's Sandy and crybabies Allison are cruy derided as squares by their peers but their good girl lifestyles are stifling part of their desires for Danny and crybaby lie in the freedom and Independence that

the love interests bad boy nature represents the good girl gone bad Trope suggests that within the Madonna [ __ ] binary the bad girl is always there waiting to come out if given the chance and that girls can only really move in one direction from good to bad in Rihanna's good girl gone bad the transformation from good girl to bad is characterized as a kind of death through lyrics like easy for a good girl to go bad and once we've gone best believe we've gone forever and when Taylor Swift launched a more dangerous darker image

and look what you made me do she lent into the same idea the old Tor can't come to the phone right now cuz she's dead innocent Christian girl Jessica on True Blood is murdered and turned into a vampire thus faded to remain an eternal virgin even as she becomes a very sexually active Undead creature even when the good girl to bad trajectory isn't a literal death it often plays out as a total transformation which signals a new kind of desirability that wasn't present before Sandy tell me about it St the good girl gone bad Trope

is a popular sexual fantasy Ariana Grande's dangerous woman video embodies this connection between the bad girl and sexuality as if the good girl going bad is simply just her tapping into her sexiness and desires and I feel like dangerous woman is always inside all of us and every now and then she just got to come out there's also a sense that for the childish good girl to be taken seriously as a woman or even as a professional she has to break with her good girl image in The Bling Ring and Spring Breakers which cast former

child stars Emma Watson Vanessa hudgin and Selena Gomez each in one of their first significant adult roles this becomes a meta narrative with their more dangerous characters signifying that as actors they don't have to be confined by their original wholesome public personas but this whole metaphor of killing your good girl self to become the fully sexual and adult woman is troubling because it reveals how women feel pressure to fragment themselves into two separate selves rather than one integrated ho in Riverdale Betty kooper's sultry bad girl self is so split from her good repressed preppy self

she can only Express dark Betty as a full-on Alter Ego complete with a black wig Betty couldn't make it so she sent me instead fortunately Betty's Journey isn't one of complete transformation but rather toward a gradual reconciliation between both her dark and Light Side similarly in Modern Family Claire initially a modern update to the 1950s housewife and mother is contrasted with her father's more overtly sexy second wife Gloria and she tries to protect her pretty daughter Haley from going down the path of the irresponsible bad girl but it sometimes emerges that the distance between CLA

and Gloria isn't really as large as it seems CLA is denying her own bad girl past hiding that part of herself because of the shame attached to it I was out of control growing up there you know I said it I I just don't want my kids to make the same bad mistakes I made and Black Swan Nina is less successful at Bridging the scab which leads to a tragic ending after the ballerina is told she's essentially too perfect to embody the Black Swan character I see you obsessed getting each and every move perfectly right

but I never see you lose yourself like Betty She experiences a complete fragmentation of the self she can only become the Black Swan by envisioning this as a completely separate person the near impossibility of embodying both the Pure White Swan and the sexual Black Swan within her world causes her to destroy herself and this time the death isn't just of the good girl white swan but of Nina's whole self as nah experiences the good girl bad girl binary reveals a catch 22 both the good girl and bad girl are derided and treated as somehow wrong

or inadequate neither path is truly accepted by society and both tropes are wielded to manipulate female behavior in impeachment President Clinton controls Monica Lewinsky by urging her to be a good girl I thought you were a good girl I've been good I've driven myself crazy trying to be good but this is ironic because it's CLE Clinton's actions that make her perceived as the bad girl who will be ripped apart by the public so women are damned if they do damned if they don't Society will shame good girls for being too innocent too pure and too

boring but will also blame them when they go bad for being manipulative deceitful weaponizers of sexuality and as all these stories show the good girl bad girl fragmentation is especially Insidious because it's so internalized for many women who hold themselves back from happiness because their condition to believe being good is irreconcilable with their natural sophisticated adult desires if you want to get these guys you have to keep your mouth shut and play by the rules so what if goodness weren't inherently shamed and women could be good girls without having their motivations questioned or people waiting

for them to eventually turn bad Laura jeene in the to all the boys I've Loved Before Trilogy represents a new incarnation of the good girl where her recognizable traits of goodness aren't an act being put on to hide an intensely repressed self she genuinely enjoys staying in hanging out with her sisters and baking up a storm I am experimenting with the wedding cake recipes and she has very classic girly romantic fantasies at the same time we see Laura jeene grow and expand her comfort zone through going to parties falling in love and connecting with new

people without any of this being some kind of shocking unnatural 180 to the dark side so throughout her Arc Laura Jean's allowed to continue embodying traits of goodness like being a home body and loving her family with these simply being authentic aspects of her character that many viewers can relate to stranger things also develops the good girl Trope when perfect seeming Nancy wheeler subverts the traditional good girl bad boy pairing at first Nancy does fit into the textbook good girl mold while her bad boy love interest Steve Harrington acts like a self-involved high school bully

but while Steve does reform in part thanks to nany's fluence Nancy ends up much more invested in the already sensitive quiet Outsider Jonathan we've got sh drama so what's a little more right her influence on Jonathan also isn't to morally improve him but to help bring him out of his shell in fact it's their shared goodness and moral code that bring the two together and keep them together so Nancy doesn't have to change to better embody Steve's characteristics because there's already someone else she's able to be herself with the problem with the good girl has

never been that goodness isn't something to Aspire to but that the label can be a stifling limiting box that women are forced into and pushed to impose on themselves today's evolved good girl is more well-rounded and multi-dimensional key and Ted lasso has never had any problem having fun and owning her sexuality while her character also gets a sense of purpose from being a caring and mature presence in her friends and colleagues lives this is rets of my anniversary weekend and it's the first best one I've spent by myself linia and Dickinson is introduced as Emily

Dickinson's more rule following and feminine sister but over the course of the series she increasingly explores how she can be a good girl who integrates all aspects of herself including her sexual side and lives by her morals rather than just the conventions of her time you're the perfect wife for me and I Know It ship we broke up because you can't ever accept me for who I am one minute I'm too sexual the next I'm too intellectual ual now that a lot of the artificial boundaries surrounding the good girl are increasingly breaking down goodness can

be embraced as something that well feels good in Jane the Virgin Jane's world is constantly being thrown into flux but she holds on to her goodness almost as a survival mechanism good always triumphs over evil in the good place we see that it is very much possible for a character to reverse the classic direction of the Ark and go from bad girl to good in a sense that's not related to sexuality but unlocking deeper moral goodness Elanor a self-confessed bad person who believes she's been mistakenly placed in heaven finds that being good and acting out

of love for others gives her the Fulfillment she's always felt was lacking showrunner Michael Sher cited ethicist Tim scanlan's book what we owe to each other as the defining principle of the show saying what he says in the book is a controversial position but which I found to be very uncontroversial which is that you ought to design rules that couldn't be rejected by the people that you're having to share the world with so here goodness is reframed not as innocence Purity or anything inherently gendered or sexualized but as a sophisticated process of continually striving toward

becoming more empathetic considerate and Kinder citizens of this planet what matters isn't if people are good or bad what matters is if they're trying to be better today than they were yesterday in terms of what's expected of women the goal posts always seem to be shifting they have to be mothers homemakers girl bosses but now not girl bosses sexually liberated but not too sexually liberated to the point where it's hard for them to Simply Be themselves archetypes like the good girl have historically been constructed by men and for men and defined mostly by a confining

absence of taboo behaviors rather than positive expressions of agency so it's crucial that today's more well-rounded integrated good girls are self-defined and appealing to other women many of the Good Girls qualities like her hope kindness hardworking nature and love for family but the best part is spending time with my sisters are worth emulating by any human so the good girl far from being left behind in the past is ready to enter a new era one in which genuine goodness isn't shamed or used to shame others and where she can exist on her own terms without

feeling pressured to adopt anyone else's definition of what good really means I am a twisted witchy creative horny woman this is the tape on your favorite movie shows and culture subscribe so you can watch all of our videos I'm willing to bet that the good girl would love skillshare it's bursting with fun classes on everything from crafting to baking to self-care right now the first 1,000 viewers to click the link in the description below will get an entire month of skillshare for free I'm constantly looking at how I can speak to more people through my

personal essays so I love Siri botton's course writing essays making the personal Universal it gave me the tools to create stories about my experiences that will still appeal to a wide audience skillshare is designed to give you the best possible learning experience so they have a strict no ads policy and they're always launching new classes to help you improve your practice so click the link in the description below and start nourishing your creativity today [Music]