I have always had a tendency to fall for bad boys. I have long suspected that this probably expressed my own suppressed ‘bad girl’ tendencies. However, that didn’t stop me from being a good girl. Drugs, rock and roll, partying – they bored me (and still do) and my sex life is non-existent. This is all fine by me. This morning however, I found myself wishing to be a bad girl. Since this is a much healthier thing than to fall for a bad boy, I thought I’d explore what that means to me.
1) A bad girl puts her own needs first.
This is not news of course. I have written about this before. Only when you have put the safety mask over your own head, can you devote yourself to helping others in a plane going down.
2) A bad girl doesn’t mind what people think of her (or what she thinks they will think of her).
This is an interesting one, because I have NOT had this on my mental agenda at all. And that is despite never having shunned controversy. I think this relates to the feeling many people sometimes have of not being allowed to take up space. So far I have always been outspoken and yet fretted about what people would think. It will be interesting to see whether that will change.
3) A bad girl is strong and lives her life driven by her passion
Interestingly my family made this the main theme of the song they wrote for my 40th birthday recently. (And of course this bad girl doesn’t mind being 40, nor pretends she’s younger.) To a large extent I have already been living this, but my ideal of this is that it becomes so integrated that it becomes a source of energy freely expressed for the well-being of others as well as myself.
4) A bad girl doesn’t worry about foolish people making foolish decisions
I think this one just might make my life a lot easier, if I really succeeded at applying it. I have a tendency to worry too much about things I can’t change and that are really none of my business. It’s one thing to worry about social injustice or the environment: I don’t expect to stop speaking out about such things on twitter and Facebook. However, to worry about all the trivial things that might be done better is really a waste of energy.
5) A bad girl knows how to enjoy herself
I have been getting better at this, but it’s still a challenge.
Of course even if I managed to live by these, none of them would make me a bad girl. And equally obviously, perhaps, I didn’t base this list on the cliché bad-boy or bad-girl. I do think it is perhaps a reflection on my view of what makes a ‘good girl’:
A good girl puts everybody’s needs above her own
It’s interesting that this one line can be seen as opposite of all five of my points to being a bad girl. (1) A cliché good girl may take others into account to such an extent that she has no notion of her own needs. And unfortunately that means her own needs come out of her in all kinds of warped ways. (2) A good girl minds what people think so much that her own opinions hardly register (not really my pitfall, but I see it in girlfriends). (3) A good girl takes care of other people and again doesn’t take her own passion into account. (4) A good girl is so good at thinking for others that even silly mistakes people make become her responsibility to fix. (5) A good girl takes care of others to such an extent that she has no idea how to enjoy herself.
Perhaps, right now, to me spirituality is about finding a middle ground between living my own life and taking others into account.
Ultimately, the good-girl-bad-girl dichotomy is silly. Especially when applied to a 40-year-old woman. What the above adds up to is really about what makes a STRONG WOMAN. Especially if she succeeds in being a loving, patient and caring person as well as grounded in her own being.
Your ideas are so interesting, Katinka! Very well articulated! I’m like you—trying to be a strong woman by balancing the need to think of others with the need to care for myself. Best to you! Light & Love, Shelah