Why the "Good Girl" is Bad for Women

By Alexandria Boddie

Why the "Good Girl" is Bad for Women

OMG. When actress and model Rie Rasmussen says you're gorgeous, accept it! I was very honored to be introduced to her through a good friend - Rie was looking for women to feature for Broadly - Vice Media's newest vertical. It was a gorgeous afternoon, and I was feeling brave: this is the heaviest, and pudgiest I've ever been, and I don't care. And neither did she. I was asked to share some thoughts about the theme of why we shouldn't raise our girls to be "good" and obedient. Well, I've got a whole lotta thoughts about that. Excerpt below...

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"I know firsthand the consequences of raising obedient girls. My mother is a warrior queen [who] made hard decisions and so many sacrifices. My mother loves my sister and I fiercely [and] is our defender--but my mother is also a black woman from a small town in Alabama, the ninth of 10 children, yet the first of the family to attend an integrated school. The legacy of slavery and Jim Crow is such that we, as black people of the working poor, had nothing except our dignity and respectability, which was always under assault and still is. So by the time my mother was out of college, married, and raising me and my sister in north Dallas in the early '80s as we attended fully integrated schools, she believed that discipline and control was how you keep young black girls safe..."

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Alexandria Boddie

I'm a one-woman circus and the world's most passionate Grace Jones stan. Everything about your planet confounds me, except cats. Book me: hritalent.com


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