In Praise of Nice Girls Everywhere

Like I promised. This is the article that i promised i'd put up from my friend's blog who promised to write it.

Here it is.

This one is for the nice girls.

Nice girls who will always remain ‘a good friend’. Nice girls who are ‘just one of the guys’. Nice girls who get punched on the arm (because they’re just one of the guys), but never get kissed on the cheek. Or anywhere else.

This is for the women who talk of women’s lib but are secretly too shy to actually ask a guy out. And who must haplessly watch him being asked out by a girl, who’s I.Q. is about as high as her neckline (which, in case you missed the point, usually isn’t too high). This is also for those girls who can never summon up the courage to tell a guy, that they think he’s the best thing since sliced bread. And who will continue to think that while the guy in question flirts shamelessly with them in a half-assed attempt at making a completely different girl jealous. This is in honour of girls who give roses on Rose Day, but never get one back in return. The ones who have to resort to dropping hints in order to get asked out but, (since men are men and wouldn’t take a hint unless it showed up naked on their doorstep bearing apple pie) who never get asked out anyway. This is in salutation to the girls who prefer playing hard to get, and who wonder why all the nice guys are dating women who play not-hard-to-get-at-all. This one is for the girls who’ve been repeatedly told that they’re smart and cute and desirable – just not by the guys they actually care for. This is a voice for women who appreciate that under the macho-man-randy-savage testosterone drive, most guys are not too bad, as friends or as anything else, and who don’t honestly want to be put on a pedestal and be worshipped for thinking so.

This is a tribute to girls who never have doors held out for them, never have chairs pulled for them, and never complain about it. This is for women who’d happily split the bill with a friend, boyfriend, husband if only they’d had one. And if only he’d let them. This is in defence of women who give tentative hugs out of the fear that they might send the ‘wrong signals’, who never drink too much at parties so they’d never have to be ‘cared for’ and who never, ever misbehave. And this is also for the girls who still stay friends with girls who openly flirt with their boyfriends, but who’d never dream of stealing their best friend’s boyfriend, even if he’s their intellectual soulmate. Because they’re nice girls and nice girls don’t do that sort of thing.

What nice girls do is get stood up, ditched and taken for granted. Nice girls get to be the friendly ear, someone to crib about ex-girlfriends, present girlfriends and women in general. Nice girls get to be doormats, someone whose house you can use to throw a surprise party for your girlfriend, and who’s left to clean up after you go to drop your girlfriend home. Nice girls get to be someone you kiss when you’re too drunk to notice and someone who’ll accept your profuse apologies the next morning. Nice girls get to grow up believing the Cinderella story, the Ugly Duckling story and all the stories their boyfriends tell them about why they’re getting calls from ex-girlfriends in the middle of the night.

This, dear nice girls, is for every time a guy told you that “any guy would be lucky to have you” and you wished he’s stop saying that considering he wasn’t doing the having bit himself. This is also for all the times you’ve watched your crush ogle at women whose idea of socializing involves high-pitched giggles and cleavage-baring antics. This is for all the hours of knock-knock jokes, breast jokes, beer jokes, women jokes, feminist jokes and dead baby jokes, of being a ‘sport’, being a ‘pal’, being the only one in the group not salivating over the Playmate of the Month, or not having any kind of Mortal Kombat score to discuss. This is for every time you wanted to but couldn’t stop being sensible, for every fun thing you didn’t do because it seemed ‘inappropriate’, every guy you pined for because he was, in some odd way or other, “off limits”. This is for every time you wondered what the hell was wrong with you, if you set off an allergic reaction in men and if that wasn’t the case then why all the men in the world have to have such a lousy taste in women.

The worst part of this story, girls, is that eventually most men look out for someone they can take home to mommy. Oh they’ll shake their heads and laugh it off if you ever suggest it, but deep down that’s what they really want. Eventually. While they’re secretly fantasizing about lingerie models, the only one they’ll really consider marriage material is the girl-next-door variety. Someone who needn’t exactly be a chef extraordinaire, Salma Hayek’s twin or winner of the Nobel Prize for Astrophysics. But also someone who won’t embarrass the shite out of them by quaffing beer, flirting with their cousins at family get-togethers or insisting on dirty dancing with them in public. In other words, a ‘nice’ girl. And till men in general are hit by the proverbial bolt of lightning that, by god, she’s the one I’ve always been looking for, your destiny is to live down the injustice, the humiliation, the heartache and the suffering. Go ahead, just do what you do best. Be nice.