Nice Girls and Nice Guys Finish Middle (Class)
- By Kelly Diels
- 15 April, 2010
- 46 Comments
Before we get into nice discussion about nice girls and nice guys, I want you to go watch this video.
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(I mean it. I’m not even going to be nice about it. Go watch and then come right back. I’ll wait for you. I might even slip into something more comfortable.)
(that space was you, watching the video. Thank you. I love it when you do what I tell you.)
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I don’t know the context for this scene. I don’t have a lot of grounding in the series but based on this - and Joan, omg Joan is My People – I suspect I would love it.
What I do know is this: there are some angry women on Mad Men.
Betty Draper, for example, our rampant pigeon shooter, is the (very nice) poster girl for nice girl rage.
I know some nice girls are nodding their heads, right now.
I mean, we know this story: about how women bite their tongues and their carrot sticks to keep it all in check. How we, historically, have made nice and played small. How an angry woman is a spectre. How ‘hysteria’ and ‘bitch’, liberally or even hypothetically applied, can shut us up.
“I don’t want him to think I’m a bitch.”
We’re nice because anger is dangerous. So we file down our nails and with it our edges and dull our teeth and nibble at the edges of directly expressed emotion and, let’s be honest, life.
We’re the nice women. We’re doing The Right Thing at the right time in the right way and probably wearing the right shoes while we’re doing it. Nicely.
And I have no doubt that a lot of nice women are holding it together publicly and then shrieking at their kids at home.
I submit to you that the ‘nice girl’ is confined, constrained, and angry – and really, not so ‘nice’ at all.
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Nice means “pleasant, agreeable, satisfactory.”
Originally, though, nice meant ‘not to cut’ which became ‘not to know’ which became ‘ignorant’ which transformed into ‘foolish’ or ‘silly’ which became what we’ve got now: pleasant, agreeable, satisfactory.
Who aspires to this?
Nice is a social strategy and its tactics are quiet, smiling, obeisance, sacrifice, agreement, gifts, doing favours, ingratiation.
Nice is a bribe. Nice is a way to be un-noticed while raging inside at being un-noticeable.
Nice is a way to gain the trust of someone who has no business trusting you. In fact, in The Gift of Fear, Gary de Becker includes the ‘niceness’ ploy as a pre-indicator of violence.
Nice is patting your irritable kid on the head and kissing your philandering husband and then going outside to kill some birds.
Because a victim, especially a nice one, is the most dangerous creature on earth.
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All of this is what nice means, but what nice does not mean – and what we often conflate it with – is “innately good.”
So that’s nice, and The Nice Girl.
What about The Nice Guy?
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Nice guys. I’ve ended things with guys and had them reply, see? this is what happens to the nice guy.
And – perhaps like a lot of women – I let them think that.
Because I was being nice.
Women do this a lot. We tell guys ‘you’re such a nice guy’ when really what we mean is I would go out with you, but:
- you’re creeping me out
- your house is filthy which scares me and god forbid we live like that
- your conversation is beige
- you don’t surprise me
- I’m smarter than you
- you’re not bringing it in the bedroom
- you’re aimless and I’d have to carry this thing
- I’m worried that I’ll have to do all the work in this relationship
- I think that all this sweetness is an act to cover up the fact that you’re flaky and once you’ve ‘got’ me, you won’t really be there for me
- you’re not that great of a kisser
- you’re too much work
- you want to eat my soul
- I know that this sweet stuff is a front. You don’t want to be nice to me – you want to own me
- you lack initiative
- you’re not intellectually challenging
- I would have to unlock you
- I see the future and it is me shopping for your family at Christmas while you watch TV
- I can see what you want and it is too much
When I do this – when I spare the guy’s feelings to avoid a scene and just agree that yes, the problem is that he is too nice – I perpetuate the nice guy myth.
That nice guys finish last. That the good guy never gets the girl.
Which leaves a lot of men running around, wounded, thinking that ‘nice’ is a problem – and it is, but not for the reasons they think – that must be cured. The cure, they think – or dating gurus are quick to reassure them – is to be a jerk, or a pick up artist, or just plain not nice to women.
Any PUA will tell you that women don’t like nice guys or that good guys who are ‘too nice’ to women won’t be successful with women.
Not true.
It is weak, ineffectual, closeted control-freak guys that repel women (and people, more generally). Nice isn’t the problem.
Or maybe it is.
Here’s my PSA: just like The Nice Girl, The Nice Guy isn’t really nice.
Often nice is a social strategy. Nice is a mask worn by scared, creepy, angry, bribing, entitled, controlling people.
Nice covers a lot of anger.
This is what I know about nice guys, and why I’m suspicious of them:
Because in life, nice guys are not getting what they want, and they’re mad, and they’ll be mad at me, too when I don’t toe the line (and I won’t). The worse a guy’s character, the nicer he’ll try to act.
But I’m too nice to tell a man these ugly truths.
And so flourishes the urban myth that nice guys finish last (with women) – if they get to finish, at all.
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Just like the Nice Girls, Nice Guys are angry.
Nice appears to be flexible but is rigid: Nice has muscled and restrained herself, intently and vigorously, into compliance with everyone else’s expectations and so your failure to do the same – for her, for the world – enrages her.
And I’m okay with anger – anger is fuel and anger can be hot and oh, the righteous fires that anger will light.
But repressed anger is stasis. Repressed anger is vindictive, passive-aggressive, and insidious. Repressed anger is dangerous.
The truth is this: repressed anger is the shadow of Nice. Anger, denied, trails Nice everywhere, in every light.
Here’s another truth:
The Good Guy does get the girl.
But Good Guys aren’t necessarily nice. In fact, all the man and women I know, respect, love or want to love are most definitely not nice.
Nice: pleasant, agreeable, satisfactory, deceptive, dangerous.
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My point: nice guys are not nice, meaning ‘innately good’.
Nice is just the angle they’re working to get what they want. And when they don’t get what they want, they blame nice, and strip away nice and show the world who they really are.
And who they are is who the women in their lives - who lied and told them they were nice - knew they were, all along.
I have some ‘bad boys’ in my life – but they’re not really bad boys. Instead, they’re men who are at home in their skin and their masculinity, sexuality, aggression, vulnerability, heart, darkness, light – and don’t need to camouflage any of it with a layer of nice. I know that if I ever turned one of these men down, sexually or romantically, they’d never lash out at me. These guys – these men – would never call me a bitch or even a bad word (unless…well, never mind).
But the so-called nice guys? They’re nice until you don’t want ‘em or you don’t give them what they want. And then they call you a bitch or a tease or a slut.
Nice.
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I love this.
The theme of niceness and being “not nice” and worrying about not having “nice” kids (or not being seen as “nice!”) has been showing up a lot in my life and especially online the past couple days. And this post neatly summed up why I don’t want to raise “nice” kids, why it’s so important to me to raise kids who can express themselves even if it’s not “pleasant” or “nice”.
Good kids, yes. Kind kids, yes. Kids who assert their boundaries, fuck yes. But save me from raising a “nice” kid!
[Reply]
[...] serendipity, at the same time I was posting this, the amazing Kelly Diels was hitting publish on Nice Girls and Nice Guys Finish Middle (Class), on why “nice” isn’t. For anyone wondering why I’d rather the Boychick [...]
Very difficult for me to hang with either “nice” guys or girls anymore. Too painful.
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A fascinating read, as always. I didn’t watch the video but I did read every word.
Nice is definitely the angle that is being worked, even worse are the self professed nice guys, who are anything but nice. Saying that, I did marry the nice guy in the end, after marrying the “better” bloke who swiftly turned into the controlling violent type, in my scenario the nice guy was the better guy. But he is the only one I have some across like this
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I agree with every word and wish to add an extra embargo on “cute”. Cute means puppies and kittens. Cute means HARMLESS. I was cute for many, many years until I realised that I didn’t want to be cute. I wanted to be terrifying!
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I don’t actually agree with your definition of nice, and the implications attached to it. Anger is good if you just want a vent, if you want to get something off your chest, but what it’s not good for is actually communicating with people. Anger gets people on the defensive, and stops them from being willing to listen to what you’ve got to say, it gets in the way of being effective.
Nice is not ineffective, nice is a channel to being effective. It lets you communicate, argue, debate with someone, without putting them on the defensive, and stands the best chance of actually getting them to engage with you, to consider what you’re saying.
You suggest that nice is somehow not genuine, that it involves stowing away your feelings, seething, bubbling inside, but none of that is inherent to being “nice”, it’s inherent to being repressed. The two traits, whilst they are perhaps often found together, are not automatically partners.
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Interesting to think about this. Brought to mind some women friends that I have had who judge behavior and personality that do not match the “nice” girls image. It allows them to feel superior and vindicated in their suppression. Conveniently presenting a target and taking away from any self-reflection. Also made me sad for my younger brother…a “nice” guy, not so much.
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Jeez! Such a complex and multi layered post. I must remember to read your stuff later in the day when I’m sharper!
Here’s the thing – “niceness” or for that matter “nastiness” is so often a persona that people adopt, and as you suggest, it’s only when people revert to their natural selves – “get comfortable in their own skins” – that any magic really begins to happen.
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I am still lost as to what I just read, but aren’t you getting a bit too ahead with generalization? if i were to take your definition/description I would think that being ‘nice’ is unsatisfactory and who knows i might get rigid and tough on attitude.
I agree with Mike here, primarily because many people aren’t natural and they pretend too much- the same category you are talking about, but it’s a bit vague and it appears that you are thrusting a few experiences to put everyone in that box.
[maybe i lost sense of the post and couldn't get the purpose]
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to quote myself for various years of my life
“Nice guys come last because they’re invariably losers.”
I’ve found guys who are nice wish they had the balls to be something else, christ even i’ve been there a few times.
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Fantastic, Kelly! The words that were swirling in my head as I was tweeting yesterday – well, not quite the exact words but close.
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This one is a keeper. For your children–for all of us. Absolutely dead on. I remember that woman from the neighborhood, I remember wondering why I didn’t want to grow up just like her–but knew somehow that I didn’t.
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Spot on as usual, Kelly. The video summed it up beautifully. I laughed my ass off at the list of real reasons why we reject guys—so true! I have never been able to bring myself to say these things unless I was enraged. Usually I would fall back on the old “it’s just me” line.
I still haven’t figured out how to tell the truth about these sorts of things without being unnecessarily unkind.
It’s interesting the tack that guys usually take when they want to break up with someone but don’t have the guts to tell them the truth. I’ve noticed that rather than break up and say “it’s me” as a woman might, they will let things go on and on and just be really passive aggressive until the woman gets fed up and breaks up with him.
I think a distinction should be made between “niceness” as a way of people-pleasing, of avoiding being thought of as a bitch, as a mask for unpleasant truths we want to avoid, versus kindness, a genuine feeling of compassion, of wanting to avoid hurting someone unnecessarily.
Ultimately, I think people know the truth about themselves deep down, however deluded they may seem. The guys who turn into manipulative pick up artists because they’re bitter about being “nice” guys are just using that as an excuse, they had it in them all along.
And I agree that the “good” guys aren’t necessarily “nice,” though they are usually kind. I married a good guy, a guy basically incapable of lying (though unfortunately he has learned a thing or two about telling white lies from me in the past 16 years…)
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I think what we’re all looking for is authenticity and being “nice” is generally being unauthentic. When people are secure enough in their own skin to not have to conform it’s inspiring and attractive.
Being ourselves, our true selves, does not mean being cruel or callous, it just means we’re not going to pretend to be something we’re not just to be thought kindly of.
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It’s a tried and true quote, because it’s true, “Well behaved women seldom make history.” Well behaved women also have a much harder time getting what they want and are rarely happy with what they get.
You hit my ex right on the head with your Nice Guy = dangerous routine. While I would never advocate violence in a relationship, though he did, the idea of him getting smacked upside his karmic head with the truth of your statement is a fabulous mental picture.
Bottom line: in my experience, if you don’t rock the boat/bed/work place/dinner party, while your voyage may be relatively smooth, your still waters will run deep and be quite rocky indeed. Moreover, you will make no history and have no fun. The hell with that.
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I really have to agree with the majority here. Nice, just like any other trait, can be “faked”. Those are the ones with the other issues under the veneer. I AM a nice person, usually. For the most part, I get what I want when I have control over enough factors…sometimes even when I have no control over anything but myself.
While I may sometimes keep my anger on the down low, its not to be nice. It’s to give myself enough time to calm down so I don’t end up putting myself in jail. I have NO problem expressing who and what I am. Maybe I am an exception to the rule, but I live life with a no holds barred approach. You piss me off..you will know it. You make me happy…yup, you will know it. There are minor exceptions to those as there is to anything in life, but those are most respect for my mother or my elders…if they warrant the respect.
I surround myself with other nice people like myself. These people tell me the hard truth when I don’t want to hear it and are blunt when they do. They are still nice.
As a matter of fact, I happen to think you, Ms. Kelly D, are a nice person. Opinionated but I have yet to see or hear of you doing anything NOT nice. Otherwise, I’d not read anything you wrote.
Nice is not denying one’s negativity. It is knowing when to use that stuff (anger, et al) and when to let it be. It is knowing you get further in life by picking and choosing your battles carefully. It is knowing that being nice when others expect you to be a bitch is the ultimate revenge.
[Reply]
Gurl
replied:
on April 15th, 2010 at 5:51 am
I hate when I miss a typo… excuse the extra post, but I ment to say that I DISAGREE with the majority here.
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[...] Nice Girls and Nice Guys Finish (Middle) Class [...]
Wow! Never quite knew how to explain my disdain for nice. You did it quite well.
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Nice guys say “I’m soooooo nice, and women still treat me terribly and take what they want and just leave – I’m just too nice”.
I don’t know how anyone can genuinely hold that thought in their mind and not think there’s something deeply wrong with it… deeply self-protecting… deeply self-deceptive.
That’s my problem with “nice” guys, in my experience, (and frankly I’m never going near one again) – they lie, to you but most of all to themselves.
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I once heard that Oprah Winfrey asked Steadman if she was nice, and he said,”no, you’re not nice, but you’re kind.”
I am still angry about the “boys” who signed my senior year book (and this was in 1964)”to a nice girl!” These were boys who would have never asked me out because I was overweight. Actually, I had the same measurements as Marilyn Monroe, but she was beautiful and voluptuous, and I was FAT. Nice meant to them that I was smart (maybe), funny (maybe), but I ain’t ever gonna touch you ’cause you’re not my ideal of a woman, and you would ruin my image is we were seen with you on my arm! No wonder my self-esteem has always been in the toilet, and I make horrible choices in husbands……yeah, plural, because I did it twice, and now I’m alone, and still yearning for someone to spend my “golden” years with. Someone to REALLY love me not just my mind or my body, but my soul, and someone who can hold me when the world hurts, or my body hurts, which it now does almost constantly. It’s painful to be alone when you’re pushing 65, and there’s nothing on the horizon but pain, and you see people around you who have evidently found someone kind, but not necessarily nice, to spend their lives with.
Sorry this has gone on so long. You opened the flood gates……..8-)
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Kelly Diels
replied:
on April 15th, 2010 at 9:29 am
@Linda, oh I hear this:
“Nice meant to them that I was smart (maybe), funny (maybe), but I ain’t ever gonna touch you ’cause you’re not my ideal of a woman, and you would ruin my image is we were seen with you on my arm!”
I played that role all through high school – I was everyone’s friend. I damped down my sexuality and buttoned up my shirts. And then I was mystified – and furious – when no one noticed that I am, innately and volcanically, a sex pot.
I was nice, in every sense of (my own) definition. And I hated it when people said I was “nice”.
Now I have a similar, but less intense, reaction when men tell me they are attracted to my intelligence, or that my brain is the sexiest thing about me.
I think: everyone tells me I’m smart. I want you, my man, to tell me you can’t take your eyes off my breasts and my skin is the cream in your coffee.
So what I think what we’re both reacting to is being seen as asexual and unattractive. To not being seen at all.
In our culture, ‘fat’ is weird that way. On the one hand, a woman who is ‘overweight’ (and oh I could take that word apart) is intensely visible as ‘fat’ and not much else. On the other hand, a fat woman is invisible as a woman and especially a sexual woman.
It is a tricky business, this self-identity, self-esteem and validation thing.
What the world thinks of you DOES impact your self esteem. But there can be an inner well of self-knowledge that contradicts those negative judgements, too. And in that contradiction is power.
I often say that I have sexy dysmorphia: I see myself as so much sexier than the world acknowledges.
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Fantastic, concise, Important!
(And I’m not just being nice.)
Thanks for this post.
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I’m with Cyron and Gurl. You’re condemning all nice behavior as fake nice behavior. Declaring right off the bat that there can be no genuine niceness. Which is both empirically incorrect, I would maintain (I’ve met any number of truly nice people, people I like and like to be around. I don’t happen to be one of them, but more on that in a moment), and (long pause while I search for the right word)–I want to say “dangerous”, but that may be a bit strong.
If you sell the idea that “nice” inevitably means “fake” in some way, that it’s better to be/act angry, snide, mean, selfish than “nice”, that nice guys are truly losers, that nice girls are invariably repressed simmering stews of anger waiting to burst out in a dangerous way, there are a couple of logical consequences all that leads to that are at the least undesirable, if not actually dangerous. One is that it gives support to people who want to justify consistently behaving selfishly, cruelly, etc.–any protest can be met with “I’m being genuine, authentic; you’d be just like me if you had any guts”. The other is that it becomes socially unacceptable to aspire to nice behavior, to niceness, or to actually be nice–you can’t really be nice, c’mon admit it, you really feel angry, you really want to do . In both cases, the possibility of genuine virtue is denied. And where does that leave a person who isn’t satisfied with just being a complete selfish a**hole?
I do see there is a real issue of being fake-nice, of intentionally and with bad motivation being fake-nice, but to go all absolute about it and declare that all niceness is fake niceness misses the mark. The problem is the fake, not the nice.
And finally, there’s an issue of balance. On the one hand, never showing, or allowing oneself to acknowledge, one’s negative feelings has bad results, for sure. But so does indulging them or egging them on. I mentioned that I’m not a nice person–I’ve never had a problem with expressing anger, frustration, etc. No repressed need to go out and kill birds here. Get snarky with me, and I’m likely to snark right back. But, as Cyron notes, expressing anger definitely has its down side. Does anyone really want to be around someone who splashes strong negative feelings all over the place on a regular basis? You’re going along feeling pretty chipper, enjoying the beautiful spring day, and someone you are interacting with starts yelling and waving their arms around, your adrenaline kicks in, your heart rate goes up, and suddenly you aren’t even noticing that spring day–not so wonderful.
All too often, I’m the person doing the yelling and arm waving. It makes people, people I care about, uncomfortable. I don’t like that about myself. People have often said to me something like “yes, but at least you aren’t hiding anything, we know where we stand with you”–but I’ve noticed the yelling etc. still makes them uncomfortable. I wish I’d learned better self-control early on–it’s hard to re-program the autonomic nervous system in one’s old age.
What I’m arguing for is balance, and recognition of the complexity of dealing with our own feelings. Negative feelings are necessary for our survival–we have them for good reason–but they do have to be coped with. Simple denial or repression–not good. Letting it all hang out, splashing them all over everyone else regardless in the name of “authenticity”–also not good. You don’t like fake niceness? Well and good, neither do I. But don’t go from that to “there is no such thing as niceness” or “it’s bad to aspire to niceness”.
[Reply]
Kelly Diels
replied:
on April 15th, 2010 at 9:10 am
@Addofio, I agree with LOTS of what you have to say.
The way I was using nice was “pleasant, agreeable, satisfactory”, as a social strategy with an attendant set of tactics, used to get what you want, or to reduce the social friction that accompanies being who you REALLY are.
And the way that I see other people, and you, using ‘nice’ is in another, less sinister sense: as kindness, courtesy, and self-mastery (in the sense of not just randomly exploding with emotional reactions in response to triggers and stimuli).
I’m with you. I am all about behaving with kindness and courtesy. I’m HUGE on tact and manners – and in person, I think most everyone I know would agree that most of the time I’m sweet, kind and warm. (Probably even ‘nice’ in both senses of the word.)
What I’m reacting to in this piece is the narrative that self-identified nice guys are using to explain their lack of romantic (and other) success.
They blame their niceness, and then they jettison it.
If niceness is a quality that can quickly shuffed off, it must not be bone deep. It seems to me, instead, to be a shellac.
But you’re right – not all ‘nice’ is ‘faux-nice’. I would just used the word ‘kind’ instead.
That’s probably just semantics – but it is the way I was using the words in my piece.
Trust me, I’m with you: I want us all to behave graciously, and to deal with our pain in ways that aren’t gratuitous, and, as you wrote, “splashing” all over other people. I’m not terribly comfortable with wanton displays of anger. Deliberate rudeness is even worse.
And I know EXACTLY what you’re talking about: the ‘friend’ who tells you something jagged-edged only to jump back from your pain with a “but I’m just being honest!”
Puhleez.
“Honesty” is not a weapon or an excuse for doing harm. And neither is (faux)niceness.
[Reply]
violet
replied:
on April 15th, 2010 at 8:48 pm
@Kelly Diels, Bravi Ms. Diels. Thanks for clarifying for me as well.
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Nerdles.
That was supposed to be
“. . .you really feel angry, you really want to do [something mean or selfish or cruel or destructive]”
up there, but I put it in the wrong container symbols, and it got wiped out.
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You are the most brilliant…and well-written person I know. It’s funny, because I’ve been called out as loud and emotional and bitchy…and inside I’m thinkin’ – ‘really? i was just being me’…those who can’t deal, feel free to move along.
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I think Annabel’s comment above bears repeating:
“I think a distinction should be made between “niceness” as a way of people-pleasing, of avoiding being thought of as a bitch, as a mask for unpleasant truths we want to avoid, versus kindness, a genuine feeling of compassion, of wanting to avoid hurting someone unnecessarily.”
For most women I know, nice is code for exactly what Annabel describes – people-pleasing non-offensiveness.
It starts off being used on children to try and contain their wildness- “be a nice girl/boy”, “aren’t you a nice little boy/girl” and then it continues to be used to describe people who stay in that place of childish people-pleasing, people who stay little. The world is their disapproving grandparents who don’t let them run around the house. (or in Betty Draper’s case, it is the 1960s and women are often still treated like and expected to act like little more than older children).
Which is why we generally couple nice with girl&guy/boy vs. woman and man. Nice does not seem to fit with someone who has really stepped into their womanhood or manhood.
Imagine a woman who doesn’t shave her armpits – no matter how kind she is, you aren’t going to think of describing her as a “nice girl”.
Imagine having a piece of art you’ve poured your heart and soul into described as nice. mmm hmmm.
I’ll give Jane Austen the last word:
“I am sure,” cried Catherine, “I did not mean to say anything wrong; but it is a nice book, and why should I not call it so?” “Very true,” said Henry, “and this is a very nice day, and we are taking a very nice walk; and you are two very nice young ladies. Oh! It is a very nice word indeed! It does for everything.” [Jane Austen, "Northanger Abbey"]
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Oy – it took me so long to compose that reply that now it is redundant – feel free to delete!
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Well, Kelly, you’ve done it again. Stirred up our mental bee hives and made us think.
Niceness can be okay at social gatherings. Few people feel safe coming out as different at a cocktail party.
But, I think “Be nice” is one of the first things we all hear and understand as children. It keeps peace in the family (“If Momma ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy”), on the playground and in school. Be nice is usually said by a female authority figure (mother, teacher, etc). Boys tend to learn that women are in control of the social structure of our society. This leaves males with the options of being the lone wolf outsider, the angry rebel, the system-working jock/class president, the conforming nice kid, or the cowed introvert. (I think PUA’s come from somewhere in the middle of that.) And, not all guys are the same all the time, but we tend to find where we fit best within the mix.
It’s been moving in this direction for a few generations now, to the degree that commercials and sitcoms and even “reality” shows portray adult males as nice clueless jerks, incompetent fathers/husbands or sex addict PUA’s in order to gain audience…
That’s my male rant for now.
We were all trained to “be nice” from early on. Maybe we should try to be more assertive.
I’ve worked with nice people who would never rock the boat, but if you’re not looking they’re in the hold drilling holes.
[Reply]
Sanford
replied:
on April 15th, 2010 at 12:45 pm
@Sanford, I didn’t mean to imply fault to anyone in this. We all are responsible, but we need to take a critical view of the information we receive even in entertainment.
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Just three nights ago, my 7 year old daughter got off the phone with her dad. “Arghh, I can’t tell him he hurts my feelings because I’m TOO nice.” ‘Nice’ has always been my default behavior when I didn’t have the guts to stick up for myself because I was afraid it would rock the boat.
‘Nice’ has gotten me into some fine messes.
My daughter has had an excellent teacher. We have some serious work to do.
Kelly, you know it’s a fine post when you get these kinds of reactions.
Way to go!
[Reply]
[...] Published Nice Girls and Nice Guys Finish Middle (Class) | Cleavage by Kelly Diels.. [...]
“My point: nice guys are not nice, meaning ‘innately good’.”
I’d argue that the word ‘good’ has just as much baggage as does the word ‘nice’.
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Yup. Brings to mind a scene with my “nice” ex-husband and I at the marriage counselor for our 3rd or 4th session. Mr. Quiet, Polite, and Nice had quietly been razzing me for days until I was ready to scream (though of course I tried to talk about it with him, whatever his problem was yada yada). In the session, he quietly and nicely interrupted me when it was my turn to share (or whatever) but I knew all-too-well the anger burning in his eyes or clench of the jaw or in the twitch of his foot–well-hidden to most. I said Excuse me!! in no uncertain terms and pretty much snapped.
Long story short, the “problem” in the marriage was me and my “anger issues.” Mm-hhm. Right. I didn’t know I had such a capacity for anger until I got married to him lol My bad–I fully realize the mistake I made. But still. Seems this “therapist” had issues with a woman who doesn’t mind being angry in public and is assertive so she jumped on me. I was like WTF? I’m angry for a reason. Can’t we talk about that? Doesn’t that matter? I’m not pissed off for no reason–we’re finally getting somewhere and now you want to focus on the fact that I have normal responses to messed up shit? lol
Nice, in my experience (not just this one), is a huge facade for repression and passive-aggression and serious issues until proven otherwise lol. Give me honesty any day.
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[...] This post from Kelly about Nice Guys and Nice Girls is so good it almost hurts a little. [...]
Nice guys? Manipulative little creepy bastards. I had some nice guy cooties for a while, but blew them off. Thank Goodness.
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AMAZING post. I’m seeing a guy at the moment who says that I seem to like bastards, and that’s why I’m with him. Thing is, he isn’t actually a bastard at all. He is passionate, and comfortable with himself, he doesn’t hide himself under a layer of nice. And he doesn’t get upset when I don’t hide my rage or when I fly my freak flag.
Compare this to my 7 year relationship with a lovely guy who was genuinely nice (not in the way you’re talking about here) but a bit of a push over, who was passionless and uncomfortable with how I choose to express myself, and you can easily see why the guy who appears to be a bad boy wins.
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[...] and appreciated in recent weeks: lesswrong Short Words to Explain Relativity So You Need A Typeface Nice Guys & Nice Girls Finish Middle (Class) Who Moved My Garden? Spatial Learning in the [...]
I’m ‘good’ at being ‘nice’.
I just honestly don’t like to and it angers me every single time. Kinda not worth it for me really! Must say though, you rock. Think you hit it dead on with this article.
Down with ‘Nice’.
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[...] Nice Girls and Guys Finish Middle (Class) This reminds me of a lot of people and is a must-read if you are [...]
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mr nice guy pot…
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umjetni nokti…
[...]Nice Girls and Nice Guys Finish Middle (Class) | Cleavage by Kelly Diels.[...]…
[...] It’s not malice. It’s not even bad intentions. It’s fear. It’s hunger. It’s starvation. It’s a rightfully frightened animal, one you can’t trust. It’s a victim becoming the most dangerous creature on earth. [...]