Being a “nice” person is a good thing in superficial terms. Presenting yourself with an agreeable and generally pleasant demeanor to the people around you can help establish better connections and relationships with the people you know. Nice people are generally a positive thing. By now you’re probably thinking everything I’m saying sounds pretty redundant and intuitive. Who would argue that we shouldn’t be nice? Who would argue that it’s better to work with people who are frequently angry or disagreeable or rude?
Heck, I’m writing this article as a kind of self-criticism: I am generally labeled “nice.” You know how Hester Pryne had a scarlet A on her dress? I have a giant scarlet N for Nice plastered on my face. I spent the majority of my life defining my identity around being a “nice” girl, and was known by my others for graciously providing my teachers with little to no complaints on my behavior during parent-teacher conferences.
However, the term “nice” (as you can imagine from the title of my article) comes with more than a few problems.
What’s wrong with “nice” is that we place more emphasis on appearance than we do on character. Girls are encouraged to be nice and polite from a young age. Their childhood role models (such as Disney princesses) are commended for their kind demeanor and pleasant attitudes. I mean, whenever you watch Cinderella, you’re not exactly rooting for her loudmouthed stepsisters, are you?
Yet that’s just it. There’s too much of an emphasis on appearing pleasant or accommodating. Yet there are so many times where girls shouldn’t have to remain quiet, they shouldn’t hold themselves from expressing emotion or sadness when they want to. While continuously bursting into violent fits of emotion isn’t exactly healthy, restraining and controlling unpleasant thoughts and feelings just to make people happy isn’t too good for anyone’s wellbeing either.
Because we value girls for being pleasant, it means we value girls for not troubling us, for not causing any problems or deviating from the norm. Often, being nice means not telling people unpleasant and problematic things, like not telling someone that they’ve done something that’s bothering you. Or not saying that a situation or circumstance is really, really uncomfortable. Or just generally voicing an unpleasant truth. Frequently, being nice can mean being accommodating and pleasant at the cost of not expressing our selves. This video demonstrates how the emphasis on niceness can sometimes impede girls from processing and expressing their emotions.
The emphasis on being “nice” also means that, when women stop being so accommodating, they are instead regarded as “unlikeable” to others. In her book Lean In, Sheryl Sandberg mentions how the Harold/Heidi study demonstrated that when women aren’t presented as “accommodating” or “nice,” they are instead described as “power hungry” or “bitchy” or “bossy.” When women speak out or are opinionated or frank, we don’t tend to like them as much. Though we do value kindness in both genders, the reality is that we tend to value kindness in girls more so than in boys. While courtesy is something to be encouraged, presenting ourselves as pleasant shouldn’t get in the way of ignoring how girls who aren’t stereotypically pleasant are unique and compassionate people in their own right.
Being nice can garner you the admiration of your peers, yet can also feel demanding and repressive. Because we value the appearance of niceness so much, girls tend to internalize that being expressive, “troublesome,” or honest can mean they cease to be desired members of society.
Instead of teaching girls to be “nice” it would probably be more useful to teach girls that it’s better to be compassionate, understanding, honest, and vocal about their emotions. That it’s okay to not always be pleasant and that girls have every right to feel and express discomfort. And that authenticity is better than charm and pleasantness.
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