On Our Best Behavior: The Price Women Pay to Be Good

by Elise Loehnen

We have been trained for goodness. Men, meanwhile, have been trained for power.

The Bible is the product of a centuries-long game of Telephone, edited by men according to their preferences.

Your time belongs to your employer. The early promise of technology was to improve efficiency to liberate us from constant toil. In reality, it’s done the opposite. The idea of fallow time, creative time, time for sitting and thinking or for visiting with an office mate suggests that you’re not maximizing your yield, that there’s room to give or do more.

It was only in the 1950s that the fantasy of the working dad and stay-at-home mom emerged, an arrangement that was specifically the prerogative of white, middle-class families. While we look back at this period with nostalgia, this was the reality in America for only ten years. A mere decade has come to represent “the good old days” for millions of Americans.

Because we’re so consumed by our busyness, because so much of our attention is trained on living up to society’s expectations for survival, it’s impossible to find the space to think and plan our way out of these inequities. We’re too overwhelmed. We don’t have time to fight for our reproductive rights, for equal pay, for paid family leave and reasonable gun laws to keep our children safe. We don’t have time to expand. Denying us space and stillness is the most pernicious way those at the top of the patriarchy keep their feet on our necks.

“There are rules of femininity: girls must be modest, self-abnegating, and demure; girls must be nice and put others before themselves; girls get power by who likes them, who approves, who they know, but not by their own hand…. The girl who thinks she’s all that is generally the one who resists the self-sacrifice and restraint that define ‘good girls.’ Her speech and body, even her clothes, suggest others are not foremost on her mind.” She’s not concerned with fitting in or staying one with the group, a group defined by its reliance on not being all that. Her power doesn’t come from indirect sources: It’s based on herself, not the approval of others.

We must be likable and unthreatening enough to ensure everyone else feels comfortable—our power must be cushioned. Who, me? Don’t look at me. It’s an impossible balancing act to parent any young girl to be both strong and universally adored. Strength is partnered with respect; love, with sweetness, obedience, and care.