I first published this poem on Medium in 2021. I remember feeling the absolute elation when I wrote this. I remember how it felt to finally summarise the feelings of being a “good girl”. It came after I wrote one of the most frustrating chapters of my memoir, that I’m revisiting today. “In the beginning, I was good.” Because my childhood primed me for goodness, and church culture took that mindset and made it fucking flourish. It took many years to undo the good girl mentality. I’ll probably find new ways to unlearn it over the years to come. But I’m glad that I can see it, now. I can see the way it shows up in society and in me. I can see the way church teaches it and the way I learned it from my peers and leaders and the way I was removed as soon as I stopped being good.
Consider it some bonus content while I work on my bigger pieces for this week.
x Jas
good as in
polite
controllable
understandable
acceptable
reasonable
as in
within the bounds of your
limited expectation
girl as in
young
female
sweet
pink
pigtails
skirts
as in
used to discriminate and separate and
make me a lesser being
good girl as in
i am subject to your approval
and you are subject to no one.
because we say
good boy
to a dog when it fetches a treat
but good girl
to a woman we want to keep in line.