THE GOOD GIRL’S TIME IS UP. (So, why is she still around?)
Most women out there knows exactly what being the “Good Girl” means.
We have all seen her on TV and in movies, in ads and portrayed in stories…millions of ways where being “the Good Girl” always wins and is always rewarded. It means playing it safe, doing it right, getting it perfect, and pleasing everyone around you. Not being “too much” and coloring outside the acceptable lines. GOOD is obedient. It doesn’t rock boats or question authority. It’s pleasing, doting, or easy to be around. It means, “you’ve done what we told you to do” with a patronizing pat on the head. In other words, pretty dull. And, to the point, has NOTHING to do with making a mark in comedy. In performance. In any of the creative arts. In fact, it has very little to do with anything that has impact and real teeth to it - leadership, innovation, challenging the status quo.
Sometimes “the Good Girl” speaks to us loudly - undermining our confidence, encouraging us to play small, reminding us that we’re not ‘enough’ for whatever we may hope to achieve. Other times, she works more subtly and we hardly notice she is there but she is still influencing us - in how we feel competition arise around other impressive women, in what we hear when we look at ourselves in the mirror, in what we are willing to do to get noticed or affirmed by someone of importance or power.
Where did we learn about her? How did she get so much influence over us? Why does it seem her job is to keep us passive, hesitant, and ‘less-than’?
THE IMPOSTER SYNDROME. THE CONFIDENCE GAP. THE 16% GHETTO. All “symptoms” of something hard to pinpoint.
While teaching improv at The Groundlings in Los Angeles, I began to notice familiar patterns with the women in my classes. Strong, talented, self-possessed women would become almost subservient, insecure versions of themselves looking to please, to be liked, and ‘do it right’. Or they’d flip into what I call hyper-versions of themselves - overly feminized/girly or overly masculine/competitive/sexual. It wasn’t that it was “wrong”, it was just weird. And it wasn’t their authentic selves…it was some idea of how they were supposed to be, or some strategy used to get through the insecurity created by the program.
But that wasn’t the only place this was showing up. I had worked for Comedy Central, Walt Disney Studios, and ABC Television and was seeing similarities: lack of exposure, lack of diversity, lack of confident, authentic voices (that didn’t sound like guy’s humor just coming from a gal - who was often really hot or forced to make fun of how how hot she is NOT). Despite everything I wish wasn’t the case, I couldn’t help but ask that burning question without a clear-cut answer: after all this, why aren’t there more women? In leadership positions. As decision-makers. In any and every facet of our world - finance, media, the sciences - not merely showing up but DRIVING the content, DRIVING the decisions, DRIVING the changes.
Regardless of exactly what was happening, I was wondering WHY it was happening.
What I discovered over years of research, reading, and inquiry was something that lived beyond the improv classrooms and stages. A familiar phenomenon was happening all over! Back then, it wasn’t being talked about. But since the #metoo watershed moment, more and more light is being shown on the landscape of gender and culture.
While the doors were pried open by our feminist fore-sisters and mothers, women continue to battle another foe and this one may be more sinister than the external ones. Culture doesn’t just exist outside in disrespectful workspaces or misogynistic policies, it lives WITHIN. Our “Good Girl”. She’s the part of us that has been handed a set of rules and told to follow them. The collective ‘shoulds’ that tell each of us exactly what culture values us for and what is acceptable. It spans from fuckable Barbie to obedient human Golden Retriever all the way to invisible, ignored, and silent.
“The Good Girl” doesn’t always send the same message…
…in fact, as intersectionality is showing us, the list of rules and ‘shoulds’ gets narrower the more intersections one meets. But despite the differences in the content of those lists, the fact of those lists is what unites ALL women and girls. For these lists have not been created or freely chosen by us. Cultural norms get handed DOWN and are enforced in a myriad of obvious and unconscious ways, day in and day out.
The point is, this is how we learn what it means to be GOOD. What is allowable, acceptable, and appropriate. What is VALUED. While that varies depending on categories defined by the culture we live in (white women, black women, straight women, queer women, etc.) there are still definitions of GOOD…and those definitions aren’t just floating around somewhere…they are IN US ALL. They are a socio-historical-psychological and even biological remnant that, until exposed, plays itself out in very specific ways for specific results.
To be truly FREE, we must first see the cages we are in. Some are gold, others are barely inhabitable. But a cage is a cage. We must learn to hear and feel the “Good Girl” within, discern her motives from the ones we WANT to live from. Discern her rules from those we CHOOSE to live by. Unearth her tactics that keep us playing small, safe, and pitted against each other.
Culture and history have, for a very long time, neither valued or respected “the feminine”.
It has been given very few options in the world in which to express itself, and when it dares to step outside the lines of what has been deemed ‘acceptable’, ‘appropriate’ or ‘its place’ — well, we have seen and are still seeing what happens. Even Plato, waaaaay back when, deemed qualities such as “empathy, compassion, and care” as feminine and therefore ‘less than’. Yeah, PLATO! So, this is not a new thing.
But the tides are shifting. And many of us are feeling it’s time. Time to claim for ourselves that totality of what WOMAN is. Time to shed “the Good Girl” and step into our free and authentic selves. GOOD GIRLS AREN’T FUNNY is a talk and collective inquiry to ignite the process of stepping beyond these cultural definitions and limitations, TOGETHER, so that ALL WOMEN can celebrate the fullness of who we are and what we have to offer. Whatever it takes to do THAT is the exact same thing as what it means to be funny.