Recently, a friend was sharing a story about her childhood. This involved some children who were tormenting her, in true child-fashion, and about every fourth sentence ended with, "And my mother said, 'Be nice'. " That's when it struck me. We were both afflicted with the same problem: mothers who told us to be nice.
Yes, I can hear what you're thinking. "Be NICE!? Oh my gods, what a horrible thing to wish on a child!" But the truth is, it can be.
When we are told to be nice to everyone, no matter how they are annoying us, or upsetting us, we're being taught to shove our own feelings aside for the sake of others. And that can be a wonderful thing to do. But not always. Especially for girls.
What happens is that we stop trusting our instincts. After all, if we think someone is a creep, but our mother says he is someone we should be nice to, we're left assuming that he must not be a creep after all, and our instincts were wrong. If this happens enough, we lose faith in our intuition.
We also find it harder and harder to do or say anything that might hurt someone's feelings, even if they are crossing our boundaries and causing harm to us. I'm sure there are many reasons why date rape is so prolific, but my guess is that when women are programmed to protect others' feelings at the expense of our own, it becomes more and more difficult to say no in an assertive manner. After all, rejecting someone can hurt their feelings, right? And crossing the street to avoid someone who sets off alarm bells in your head might hurt that person's feelings.
It can be less harmful, but just as insidious in other ways. Have you ever found yourself laughing, uneasily, at a joke or comment that you found offensive in some way? Or retreating into silence when hearing someone insult others? Was that because you didn't care, or because you wanted to "be nice"?
Well, I'm here to tell you there is hope! In my (much) younger days, I tolerated behaviors that never should have been tolerated. But somewhere along the way, I decided that "nice" was highly overrated. And that sometimes people deserved to have their feelings hurt. So when a man approached me in my neighborhood grocery store and, sidling close to me (my initial "nice" thought was that he must come from a country that views personal space differently, so I shouldn't move away), whispered obscenities in my ear, I looked at him for a moment, then opened my mouth and let out a bloodcurdling scream. He scuttled away quickly, muttering about how crazy I was, and I went calmly on with my shopping.
Some time later, I was in the Post Office, waiting in the long single line for a teller. I'd finally made it to the front of the queue and was moving toward a vacant spot when an elderly man walked in the front door and straight up to the next teller. I looked about, incredulously, then yelled at him, "You! Go to the back of the line!!" He looked at me strangely and I again yelled, "Back of the line! We've been waiting here!" He ambled to where I'd motioned him, and I took my rightful place at the teller's desk. She was laughing and I asked why. She stated that that man did that all the time; he knew better but counted on the fact that people were too polite to call him on it.
Lest you think I'm heartless, had he approached me and said he needed to go before me due to infirmity or some other reason, I'd have graciously ceded my space. But I'm no longer going to be a hostage to my mother's admonitions. My new motto: No More Ms. Nice Girl!
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