Through the good girl script and the deliberate, ongoing sexualization of young girls, women are being stripped of their power from a very young age, and it’s important we talk about it.

Up until today, in the Western world, we are still living in a paradigm of reality that was designed by men for men, and especially white, straight, hetero-normative men that were living centuries ago. It’s a patriarchal, capitalistic paradigm that has been imposed on every little child coming in this world through culture, politics, school, religious institutions, and in the end… our own family.

Through tactics such as shaming, blaming, fear-mongering, guilt and creating scarcity – tactics embedded in the good girl script – young girls learn that it is safer to suppress their authentic self and conform to existing societal norms. Because if they don’t do this, they won’t get access to the very resources they need to survive: money, love, warmth, and community. 

The Co-dependent Relationship with the System

The good girl script plays into this dynamic perfectly. Capitalism, for example, forces people to pay for their existence from the moment they are born, causing them to live in survival mode and scarcity from a young age. At the same time, people only get access to money by trading a huge amount of their time (and life) for it. Plus, they need to show up in a certain way and conform to societal gender roles and norms to be accepted and deemed worthy of receiving the very money they need to survive. This is a recipe for co-dependency, because people become completely dependent on the approval and praise of a system that thrives on their fear of abandonment or rejection.

Because children are so vulnerable and dependent, and do everything to stay attached to the people around them they rely on, they are quickly controlled or manipulated to self-abandon and conform to what is expected of them. In return, this disconnects them from who they truly are and completely strips them of their personal power. They adopt the good girl script, creating a shame-based identity, often far from their authentic selves, to stay emotionally safe and survive.

A Feminine Performance

Both women and men are taught through media, pop culture, religions, school, and various other conservative and patriarchal ways of thinking that one of the core purposes of women is to ‘perform femininity.’ This means conforming to existing beauty standards, taking on the role of caretaker, and most importantly, serving and catering to the emotional (and sexual) needs of men.

In this performance, the good girl script tells women that behaving, dressing, and speaking in a certain way will make men ‘choose’ them. The patriarchal, capitalistic system thrives on this idea because being chosen by men is positioned as a woman’s sole purpose. Without it, she is denied access to the resources she needs to come out of survival mode and thrive.

What the Good Girl Script Means for Young Girls

When our girls grow up in such a male-centered and male-dominated world, they learn to adapt to the patriarchal and capitalistic paradigm – where men’s values, traits, and preferences are the norm. The good girl script teaches them to internalize these values, offering a narrow, incomplete image of womanhood – based on very binary gender roles and norms – that disconnects them from their power, intuition, and potential.

When a society campaigns for this binary reality long enough, with all the aforementioned methods, it’s quickly able to control and dominate the behavior of children, and in this specific case young girls. Especially at the ages between 12-16 when girls (and boys) are at their most vulnerable. During this time, they begin to center their lives around male approval and guidance, believing it’s safer and more effective than listening to themselves. 

Centering Men 

Because of this, little girls learn that centering men’s attention and listening to their wisdom, their leadership and their ‘intelligence’, is better, safer and more effective than listening to their own. They learn that they have no true power themselves and they have to rely on the good will and protection of men to stay safe and survive in this world.

This lays the foundation for unequal power dynamics, because little girls and boys internalize this conditioning and subconsciously start to behave accordingly. And while this starts innocent when they are young, it grows more and more complex when they mature. Resulting in unhealthy power dynamics for both women and men.

The Shame Embedded in the Good Girl Script 

Through our societal, patriarchal conditioning, women learn to be ashamed of their true feminine nature, and they learn from a young age to focus on their ‘soft feminine performance’. Instead of discovering who they are, what they want, and what they can achieve, they are taught to focus on being a good girl. They learn to be ashamed of their intelligence, desires, and dreams if they don’t align with societal norms. As a result, many women abandon their ambitions or silence themselves to fit within the good girl script. 

This leads them to devote themselves to living a life in service of everybody but themselves. Because of this, women quickly learn to suppress emotions – especially anger – to avoid being seen as difficult or selfish. Especially because the good girl script thrives on suppression and keeping women small, compliant, and disconnected from their true selves.  Through all of this young girls internalize the belief that they aren’t as capable as a man to do anything they set their mind to. 

The Consequences of Suppressed Authenticity

Suppressing these very vital parts of  their humanity leads to feelings of resentment, jealousy, anxiety, depression, and many other mental health ‘disorders’, or even physical diseases. As a result, women develop unhealthy coping mechanisms such as addiction to deal with the depression, anxiety, and learned helplessness (or perceived powerlessness). In other words: to numb the pain of living disconnected from their true selves. 

As young girls internalize the good girl script, they grow into women who impose these norms on their own daughters. They believe conforming is essential for survival, perpetuating the cycle of suppression and shame through their own behavior. 

Beauty Standards: Reinforcing the Good Girl Script

Furthermore, in our society, girls are being conditioned from a very young age to conform to certain beauty standards. Standards that are being reinforced by media, pop culture, magazines, social media, television, and e.g. the porn industry. On a daily basis, our girls are being exposed to images of women dressed in a certain way, all based on the male fantasy, the male way of looking at women: as an object that is here to serve and cater to their emotional needs and sexual desires.

From an early age, girls are conditioned to conform to narrow beauty standards, reinforced by media, pop culture, magazines, and even the porn industry. On a daily basis, they are being bombarded with images of women performing ‘femininity’ for male validation. All standards based on the male gaze: The male way of looking at women – as an object that is here to serve and cater to their emotional and sexual needs. 

Boys, too, absorb these messages and grow up believing they are entitled to women’s bodies and attention if they behave a certain way. Girls quickly learn that adhering to beauty standards will earn them love, praise, and access to the resources controlled by men. 

The good girl script ties the worth of little girls to how well they meet these expectations, leaving them dependent on external validation for their sense of value. 

Body Hair, Don’t Care?

I remember when I was 12, and my body hair started to grow, I was bullied for having hair under my armpits. The bully was a young boy from my class who also lived in my neighborhood. I knew him, and I knew his friends. I remember feeling humiliated and defeated. As if nothing else mattered anymore. I guess I said something that triggered him, and his only reaction could be something like this, as he probably didn’t have anything else to say back to me than this. And although I was aware in a sense that it wasn’t right what he was doing and saying, and it wasn’t true, I still felt very humiliated. I went home and started shaving from that day on, not feeling ready to take on this ‘fight’ on my own.

Up until today it makes me wonder how a little boy from just 12 years old could already feel so entitled to tell me something about my body and what was right or wrong about it. Of course, this is what bullying is and people are being made fun of all the time. So, I know this is not only about gender. But this specific ‘girls should be ashamed for their body hair’ at such a young age is wild to me. Where did he get this idea from that hair under armpits for girls is something unnatural and to be made fun of? Something that is gross and I should be ashamed of?

Raising Eyebrows

Another time, a friend of my older brother came into my room to ask me why I don’t wear ‘normal clothes’ just like the other girls (as the rebellious little feminist I was when I was little I wore colorful clothes going against mainstream fashion)? Next to this, I remember overhearing my friend’s father talking to my mother about my eyebrows and how they were ‘too big or hairy for a girl’ and we definitely had to go to the beautician to have my eyebrows plucked.

And these are just rather innocent examples of how media, magazines, the beauty industry, and grown up adults (men and women) reinforce the unnatural beauty standards and impose them onto little girls (and boys). I think I can speak for all women and say that we all have our own examples of beauty standards being imposed and reinforced through the shaming and judgement of the people closest to us. 

The ‘Timeless’ Beauty of the Little Girl

If we look critically at the beauty standards that women are being bombarded with, they all have some very essential things in common: it’s as if women have to look like little girls the rest of their lives. They are shamed (by men and women) when their skin isn’t flawless, when they grow body hair, when their hair is grey, brown or just not… blond and straight, or when they have wrinkles, and so many other things that just strips mature women of their power, because it distracts them from what life is truly about.

As a result, this conditions women to believe that their natural looks and aging is something to be ashamed of, and doesn’t have any value in our society. This sounds superficial, but these standards and the fear and shame of not conforming to those standards is so ingrained in every woman’s life, that it is something that they try to live up to until the very end of their existence.

Consequently, women put an enormous amount of their creative energy in such a superficial useless cause, that it distracts them completely from owning their natural, authentic selves.

Religion and the Magnifying Glass on Women’s Bodies

Religious teachings often magnify the good girl script by placing enormous emphasis on a woman’s virginity and purity. Girls are taught to feel shame around their sexuality and bodies, which reinforces the idea that their bodies are not their own. For example,  by demanding ‘virginity’ and ‘purity’ of girls and women, they create more emotional charge around sexuality and girls’ bodies, then when they wouldn’t be so concerned about it. 

By saying that the sexuality of women and girls is something they should be ashamed of, something they should hold back, something they should ‘save’ for someone they marry, they make the sexuality of women and therefore young girls so important and so ‘sacred’ that it makes it much more important than it is. It almost creates an unhealthy obsession, which in terms leads to more suppression of sexuality of both men and women. And the more sexuality is being suppressed, shamed and denied (or disowned), the more it will seek its way out in covert ways, in other words: a true recipe for rape culture.

By controlling women’s sexuality, patriarchal systems maintain dominance and further entrench the good girl script. Women’s bodies become a site of societal control, making it difficult for them to live authentically or freely. 

So, what’s next?

In this article, I’ve focused on the experience of girls and women under patriarchal conditioning. I could write an entirely separate article on how these systems affect men. But for now, I want to leave you with some words of encouragement. Awareness is the first step to dismantling the good girl script.

We have to talk about societal conditioning, gender roles, and norms and begin rewriting them. We must heal our own traumas and stories, unlearn emotional suppression, and embrace our needs, boundaries, and anger. By deviating from the norm, we challenge the shame that tries to hold us back.

When we do this for ourselves, we can embody the change and show future generations there is another way. By breaking free from the good girl script, we can collectively create systemic change and reclaim our power.

Need Help?

Away from traditional (talk) therapy and coaching Beyond Psychology has created a unique and exclusive method that takes intergenerational trauma & systemic issues into account, and aims to heal the root cause. Our tools follow a holistic trauma-informed approach and combine somatic and emotional healing practices with psychological theory & guidance.  

If you resonated with the insights shared in this blog post and are seeking guidance on your healing journey, here are 3 ways we can help you:

1. Shop In Our Webshop

In our webshop you can find all our tools sorted by theme, visit our shop here.

2. Become A Member

Become a member of our online platform & community for Self-discovery, Healing, Transformation & Empowerment.

Gain instant access to all our Meditations, Somatic Exercises, Parts Work Exercises, Videos, Visualizations and much more for just €11,99 per month or €99 per year!

Become a member here. 

3. 1-on-1 Guidance

Feel in need of personal guidance? We offer 1-on-1 guidance that transcends classic talk therapy & coaching, speaks directly to the emotions and trauma stored and suppressed in the body, and gets to the root of mental, emotional & physical suffering. Just click here to book a free intake.

Related Blogs