Men love ‘nice’ girls. We laugh at their dumb jokes, we ignore their boozy hands, we smile when they say something creepy. Nice girls don’t make a big deal. Nice girls ask what they could have done differently. They blame themselves. They swallow their narrative. Nice girls don’t make trouble.
I’ve been a nice girl a million times in my life.
When I was 14 and I was speaking in the Youth of the Year contest, one of the men judging said ‘You didn’t win the speaking contest but you have the nicest legs’ I blushed and said, ‘Oh, okay, thank you.’
I felt weird that a 70-year-old man had made a comment about my body. It was the beginning of a world where men commented on my body. Like it was something that belonged to them and I was expected to be flattered, grateful even, for the attention and the unsolicited compliments. It made me feel weird.
When I was 15 and I worked in a fruit shop and the older man who ran the shop locked me in the freezer as ‘a joke’, even though I was crying. But I didn’t tell anyone. I didn’t want to get him in trouble. And he thought it was so funny. Especially when I begged to get out. I never said anything to him. I just stopped going to work there.
When I was 16 I was raped by my date on a dark country road and when he dropped me home I said ‘Thank you for dinner’. After all, it was a long drive and out of his way. He could have just left me there.
When I was assaulted in a relationship I got over it because ‘he’ had a problem. When I had an unwanted pregnancy I didn’t ask for the money for a termination. I paid. I went there alone. I told myself I was being a feminist. That I was independent. But most of the time when I did this version of ‘being a feminist’, I was letting men off the hook – I was being a nice girl. A girl who doesn’t make a fuss.
I have smiled, and acquiesced for most of my adult life. I haven’t made a scene. There are so many incidents in my life that I should have amplified. That I should have blown up. But I told myself I was okay and I didn’t want the negative attention. And to be honest, sometimes I just wanted it to all go away. Because the burden of responsibility was like an anvil. Nice girls think everything is their fault.
Being a nice girl is a cancer. It’s a cancer to our agency. It’s patriarchy’s Stockholm syndrome. We’re Little Red Riding Hood being told to smile at wolves.
Did I ask my daughters to do this? I didn’t have to. Dominant culture demands it. Every young woman wants to be thought of as a nice girl. So, in this last year, when young women like Brittany Higgins and Grace Tame have raised their voice, when they have held men and the system to continuous account, I’ve watched them in awe.
They made a fuss. They would not ‘let it go’. They refused to be ‘nice’ girls. They refused to offer men an easy way out.
The world is not used to women like them. The system is not used to women who aren’t silenced by shame. Society is not used to women who tell the truth. These are the women who aren’t scared of wolves (and won’t smile for them.)
As an older woman I’m profoundly moved to see their relentless courage. To see women who are not immobilised by the usual weapons patriarchy uses to silence us; being called ‘angry’ or ‘hysterical’ or ‘rude’ or ‘fixated’ and told that we just need to move on.
So when I listened to the words of Brittany Higgins and Grace Tame at the National Press Club, I heard not just women tired of apologies and demanding structural change, I heard and saw the raw power of not being ‘nice’ – of not making it easy – and of making ‘a fuss’.
It’s time we said goodbye to the ‘nice’ girl. Because good men don’t need women who are ‘nice’.
Join us for March 4 Justice at the Mullumbimby Civic Hall on Sunday 27 February at midday for a rally followed by a march.
Let’s bury nice together. And let’s hunt wolves.
For four decades The Echo has printed the stories some people loved, some people hated, and some pretended not to read. If you want us to keep telling the truth, the real truth, not the sugar-coated version. We’ll need your support to keep the presses rolling. 
