Death of the Nice Girl
I got home from Buffalo Wild Wings tonight in an, amused mood, to say the least. Sure, I was a little tipsy from the beer, and sure, it was past 2am and I was beginning to get a little lethargic. However, something interesting happened tonight… I finally got up the courage to talk to a waitress I had a class with years ago. Don’t shun me yet, I really am not that creepy. I told her she looked familiar, she replied that I looked familiar as well, and we eventually struck up conversation about it. Yes, I knew exactly how I knew her, but I couldn’t come out and say it - that would be … awkward - but I was able to maintain nice chatting for a while. By the end of the night, we had determined that it was the class that we were in together. Ok cool. Not much of a story though right? Right.
Yes, I facebooked the waitress, and her status was engaged (I was a bit sad, but whatever). However, Discussion about tonight sparked an interesting conversation with a friend. My friend is a great guy, but he is jaded. He says it is just real life that caused him to be this way, but he brought up a good point.
Girls today aren’t what girls were when we were growing up.
Well, of course there is normal cultural change, but, my friend argues that most women are (paraphrasing) loose, crazy, cheaters, bitches, unwilling to have true relationships, self-serving, slutty, (and he goes on..). Well, I wasn’t quite ready to swallow that. I have lots of female friends that don’t fall into any of those categories.
Well. Several.
Ok, Ok… a couple.
I am not kidding. I tried to think about all the girls I am friends with… and to be honest I can count on my hand the ones that do not fit into ANY of those categories, or haven’t since I’ve known them. Why is this?
Growing up, I was raised roman catholic… I wasn’t going to have sex until I was married. I would only be married once. I would have kids, and life would be peachy. Chances of that happening exactly, 0%. Now. I identify myself as agnostic. I have definitely had sex before marriage (which is really the norm now). I haven’t been married yet, but the divorce rate is so high, chances are it won’t last… and the rest well, who is to know.
The world has changed a lot while I’ve been in it. I believe at it’s core, the concept of love itself has changed. Not many are out there anymore looking for love. Everyone is looking for sex (perhaps calling it ‘love’). Don’t get me wrong, I suppose I am looking for that too, but, that is a fundamental shift from what I grew up thinking. The real question though, is this good or bad?
It’s been generally agreed that men always think with their penis. The idea was, that women would need to the chaste ones. They were the key holder. I even remember an ex of mine talking about her mother taught her growing up that she would need to work hard not to fall prey to a man that just wanted her for sex. Her mother agreed with the thought that men would not be able to moderate themselves, so the women would have to moderate both. While, I know that women enjoy sex as much as men… what happens when they no longer feel the need to be chaste, or timid in their sexual endeavors? Women are of a now extremely independent, powerful, educated, and sexual gender. They make decisions for themselves, not for the men around them. Does this cause a shift in how our society works? Maybe. Hard to really tell. I have only been a part of this society for 22 years. It sure has been different than I expected though.
So, why do I say “Death of the Nice Girl”?
To be honest, I am not really sure what a “Nice Girl” is. In fact, it is all a matter of perspective. I suppose if I were to consider the nice girl, it would be a girl that wasn’t sleeping around with lots of people. Would be willing to date, exclusively. And finally, wouldn’t try to take advantage of someone just because she can.
Now. To be fair. I would hold a similar lens to define a “Nice Boy”. I think he is dying too, but, I hold out hope for myself on that one! That, and, Death of the Nice Girl is a better attention grabber.
So what do I mean? Sex isn’t something that is done with intimacy anymore. I believe the trend is more and more to sex is fun. Advances in technology, medications, protections have all made this possible. I do not fault it at all, I merely observe it as something that is happening. The stigma of a one night stand is not nearly as bad as it used to be, and short term ’sex’ relationships are more and more common.
The concept of a relationship in general is becoming more and more confusing. I have friends that are married, I have friends that are engaged, others who are in relationships or dating, and others that are dating but not in relationships. Even further I have other friends that are just sleeping with a few people on occasion. What happened?! Since when did this become ok, or even the norm? What is the definition of a relationship? What constitutes the “It’s Complicated” tag on facebook?
What happens though, when people just start to play other people to their advantage? I see it all the time, women that just want to use their sex appeal, or to tease ‘nice boys’, to getting things they want. Be it things, or attention. I see it with men as well, luring what is left of the ‘nice girls’ to be taken advantage of. Why? Are we all so obsessed with power that the idea of manipulating others to get what we want is perfectly fine? I grew up considering myself manipulative, because I had a way to get people to do what I wanted them to. However, after spending the last few years seeing what some people I know do to others…. I really don’t consider myself that bad.
So, is the nice girl truly dead? Maybe not. I don’t see many left. The bad girls, and the bad boys grow in numbers, because quite frankly, its the only way to exist in the world if you want to end up with someone. You have men like Neil Strauss writing books about “The Game”. You have women’s magazines writing to women about considering a “Starter Marriage”. These are not things that bode well for the “good ol’ days”.
I am not what I would call a conservative by any measure.. and I am really no angel either.. but.. what is happening in our society?
December 23rd, 2007 at 4:31 am
Its due to a lot of things, Lack of self confidence, lack of parents being around or raising them properly, lack of giving a shit, lack of a PERSONALITY, lack of intellectual strength to know what’s right and what’s wrong for themselves and the consequences of their actions towards others. Even the environment itself.
Its goes for both sides though. The pendulem is swinging full force in one direction, eventually it’ll even out. Today’s society shows more virgins than ever before. And more std’s than ever before. I remember growing up and the #’s were 1 out of 10 to now 2/3 (HPV is the biggest one and they didnt develope a vaccine for men… why? now we have a HUGE rate of mouth cancer due to hpv because its now a requirement for men to go down on women…). Not everyone is having sex though, but more and more people thing it happens, its due to being pressured by media and business (its a huge industry) and since its in your face all the time its suppose to be the norm. At least in america we make it a huge deal. Its ok to blow someone up but its not ok to show some boobage.
I’m rambling about multiple things , but it all affects us.
December 23rd, 2007 at 1:09 pm
peer pressure has always seem to the be the first way girls open up and become promiscuous. either by what their friends are doing or what the media is telling them. i mean, come on…Jamie Lynn Spears is preggers!
nice girls haven’t died off, they just aren’t publicized as much as the slutty ones. i mean, that’s partially why they are the nice girls. you gotta kinda hunt for these diamonds in the rough! so feel lucky that you know…a couple. hehe. =)
December 24th, 2007 at 7:23 pm
People have been sleeping around and getting divorced and sexing it up forever. It’s nothing new to look at the world and think, “Gee, I wonder where we’re going, I wonder what’s happening to family values.” We’re just a lot more open about it now.
On one hand, I think that it’s probably better this way… At least everyone’s being honest about what they’re doing now, and most people who are only looking for sex feel like they’re more able to say that they’re only looking for sex now. Before… well, I think before the situation was more open and before women felt like they had the right to ask for just sex there was a lot more manipulation and secretive behaviour going on.
On the other hand, I agree that people don’t seem to be looking for real emotional connections as much as they might have been before, but I can’t say for sure what people were doing “back in the day” because no one talked about it. Wives, for example, were expected to be sedate, devoted, good housekeepers, etc and weren’t supposed to be talking about sexual fulfillment or whether or not they were actually in love with their husbands, even as recently as the fifties. The amount of drug and alcohol use by the average housewife in the fifties was incredible, just to get through the day without feeling so wretched that they wanted to commit suicide. But no one talked about it, just like no one talked about how often the husband went out and boinked some blond because he wanted to feel alive.
So, I submit this as a theory.
Men and women simply weren’t meant to be monogamous. It’s not in our DNA, and it certainly isn’t evolutionarily adventagious. We cheat, we fuck, we divorce, all because monogamy doesn’t work for everyone and only a very few people are willing to admit it. Combine this with the fact that people are given, through mass media and popular culture, the idea that love is some grandiose thing that happens only to the worthy and only once in a great while means that people go around looking for things that they can never have and then wonder why they’re not happy.
So stop worrying about the “good girl” and worry about who you can connect to, because all we’ve got in this world is a string of connections.
January 5th, 2008 at 1:42 am
In my circle of friends (which is quite different I suspect then the rest of Dave’s friends) the issues that Dave bring up rarely happen. Most of my friends have few if any sexual partners before Marriage and also tend to stay married. What does this mean? I suspect that what Dave is noticing is more a reflection of the type of people he hangs out with rather then a ‘change in society.’ As Tabitha points out people have been having casual sexual relations for as long as there has been humans, that part of humanity hasn’t changed. At the same time there is still a part of society for whatever reason that does continue to follow what Dave labeled ‘nice’ guys and girls, they aren’t necessarily disappearing, simply they are hanging out in different circles. I say none of this to put down anyone’s sexual preferences merely to ask the reader to look at their own lives and see if what they have noticed ‘changed’ is really ’society’ or themselves?
January 10th, 2008 at 10:05 pm
your blog is a lot more interesting than i would have thought. I agree with what you were saying. My ex recently broke up with me because he got a bunch of money from internet marketing and is dropping out of money to make more money than i can only dream of making. When you value your career more than your relationships i think it tends to lean more towards random hook-ups because its more feasible. Basically he left me and now is hanging out with club rats because hes got the money now and wants to move to cali and live the rich life.
its the american dream. thats why im proud to be canadian.
I haven’t changed but I kept hearing “if you could only change this about yourself then we could be together”.
girls are scared of getting hurt and maybe some of them feel that if they detach themselves from sex then its less likely they will get hurt in the end, divorced or whatever else