Have we finally had enough of Madonna, Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan and their foul-mouthed, oversexed, over-popped, partying ilk? Could it be that even young America is looking for "the good girl" to make a return to center stage?Well, in an article for The Daily Beast (not a conservative source, by any means) Marisa Meltzer does indeed argue that "Good Girls Are Back."
...Sex will always sell. This decade has been dominated by raunch culture, which, as defined by Ariel Levy in her excellent book Female Chauvinist Pigs, is women making sex objects of other women and of themselves. “Sex appeal,” Levy writes, “has become a synecdoche of all appeal.” It’s “empowering” women (as well as a lot of impressionable young girls) to wear a shirt with the Hustler logo, take cardio striptease classes, or get an $80 Brazilian wax. It’s Heidi Pratt with a bunny tan line on the cover of Playboy or the breakout stardom of fellow Playboy alumna Kendra Baskett.
But lately, raunch culture appears to be in remission. In its place is a new cultural paradigm: the nice girl.
Instead of being photographed getting carried out of bars at last call, nice girls, like Harry Potter star Emma Watson, enroll in Ivy League schools (she’s headed to Brown). They, like Disney singer/actress Demi Lovato, give interviews about being bullied in school and how much they love their parents and best friends. They wear purity rings to show the world just how virginal they are, like American Idol’s Jordin Sparks. They are everywhere in teen culture: Abigail Breslin, Emma Roberts, Dakota Fanning, Taylor Swift, iCarly’s Miranda Cosgrove.
An adherence to modesty—the antithesis of the thong—is also intrinsic to the nice girl package, and we’ve seen it in the jumpsuits and maxi dresses in fashion this summer. The September issue of Teen Vogue, a magazine that has always championed niceness, has a story about how its readers can set appropriate boundaries with teachers, coaches, bosses, and other authority figures...
Now it's not much of a surprise that Meltzer eventually takes a few shots at good girls. (She is, after all, the co-author of a book called How Sassy Changed My Life.) But her criticisms are unfounded and, to be frank, rather bizarre. Meltzer believes, for instance, that "all this niceness can be stifling" and "the problem with nice is that it doesn’t particularly encourage a full range of emotions."
There's also this gem: "Nice girl culture doesn’t give much in the way of advice for how to deal with normal conflict or disappointment." Come again? "Nice girl" virtues like patience, hope, humility, other-directedness, forgiveness, spirituality, and self-control aren't relevant to conflict and disappointment? Does Meltzer prefer throwing tantrums, getting stoned or going on a buying binge?
No, I'm afraid that the conclusions of Meltzer's article end up to be self-serving; that is, she uses the return of the "good girl" to help her try and sell her own idea of the "sassy girl" -- an Alice in Wonderland with occasional dashes of Britney and Lindsay to keep her interesting.
Nevertheless, Meltzer's lead paragraphs are revealing. Perhaps there is a new niceness emerging from the vulgarity of recent decades. That would certainly be a hopeful and well, a very nice thing for American girls...and boys.
