Autopsy of a Good Girl
Liberation by Death
When I was in college, there wasn’t a single essay or class presentation that didn’t include my favorite quote:
“Find out who you are and do it on purpose.”
A line made famous by the iconic Dolly Parton. But with no disrespect to Ms. Parton, I’ve made some edits.
Becoming your true self requires casualties. Kill the woman they told you to be so you can become the woman you are.
We all know the script. The one handed to you with your first dress.
Smile. Look pretty. Don’t make a fuss. Be polite. Be small. Be agreeable. Oh…..and here’s a lifetime of notes from the patriarchal handbook titled How to Be a Good Girl.
And I followed it. Religiously. Blindly. Obediently.
I centered my beauty. I smiled on command. I swallowed my anger. I gave him grace, excuses, admiration. I was everything a good girl should be.
Then one day, I killed her. The death was slow and painful. A bloodbath.
And when it was done, I stepped into my villain arc. Because if you aren’t the good girl, you’re the villain.
And that is what I hope to translate into this website. An artistic expression, personality, a vibe, an escape. Not an escape from reality - an escape from expectation. This is where we stop asking who we are allowed to be and start becoming women we were warned not to be (ppsssttt - it’s time to adopt that cat).
Every piece you see here is intentional. Every aesthetic choice is a signal. Every word is a small act of disobedience.
This is not the Good Girl speaking. She would have softened this. She would have made it easier to consume. She would have made sure you were comfortable.
I have no such obligations. Because once you understand that love was never designed to protect you, you stop performing for it, you stop negotiating with it, you stop needing it to validate your existence.
What remains is something far more dangerous.
A woman who sees herself clearly, who cannot be reshaped once she has chosen her own form, a woman who is no longer asking to be held, but is fully capable of standing alone.
Welcome to her Villain Arc
The house that Raised me
I didn’t grow up with just one blueprint for womanhood. I grew up with two warring empires.
My mother was college educated, independent, self-sufficient, a lover of books and powered by self determination. A woman who built her life living by the beat of her own drum and refusing to shrink for anyone.
My grandmother was her opposite in every way society demanded she be. Married at twenty-one. Four children by thirty. A former stay-at-home mother who survived poverty, domestic violence, and a generation that told her endurance was a virtue.
My mother’s message was one of female empowerment:
You can be anything you want. Education is your freedom. You don’t need a man. Anything you choose to do I expect you to do with excellence.
Meanwhile, my grandmother whispered a parallel gospel in the background. She taught me how to cook, how to clean, crochet, and garden. Not because she believed a woman’s place was in the home but because the home had been the only domain she was ever allowed to be.
But the one thing I always knew growing up is that we were safe. And that there was a special peace they both shared, no longer being subjected to my grandfathers cruel authority. But just because I was safe didn’t mean I was free. I inherited something else. Not their circumstances but their conditioning. My generation was handed a different kind of cage. Not domestic confinement, but aesthetic obedience.
The millennial generation was raised on hyper-thinness, beauty, and male validation. We learned that being a “good girl” wasn’t just about being polite it was about being pretty, pleasing, and flawlessly light.
Light in weight. Light in presence. Light in needs. Light enough to be held, but never heavy enough to be an inconvenience.
We were raised on low-rise jeans, Victoria’s Secret Angels, thigh gaps, heroin chic, “You’re not like other girls,” and boys whose approval was treated like oxygen. We had to watch incredible women like Topanga give up Yale to marry dusty ass Corey Mathews, Rachel get off the plane to Paris on her way to her DREAM job to take back the emotional abuser Ross, and Carrie Bradshaw run back in the arms of Big a grown man in his 40’s who stood her up at the alter because he manage his own feelings.
And somewhere between all that, the dress codes, the beauty standards, the scripted romances, the curated good girl in me learned her role. Not because I wanted it. But because every story, every heroine, every cultural blueprint taught me the same lesson:
A woman can be anything… as long as she remains easy to love. Don’t have disagreements, don’t react to his treatment, and always give everything you have to him. Even if you pursue a career, take care of children, run the household, and under no circumstances should you ever scrimp on the adoration and labor he needs. And I spent years trying to be exactly that.
Despite my mothers influence, I made a lot of the same choices as my grandmother. Met my husband at 23, married at thirty, our son conceived on our honeymoon, I built a life around him.
I took told care of the home. Took care of him. Took care of everything. And in the process, I drowned. I did everything I was supposed to do. I was thin, attractive, easygoing, supportive, funny, smart, undemanding. I required very little. Until I didn’t. Until I needed more. And the moment I stopped orbiting him, the life I had built began to collapse. Not because I had failed.
But because the Good Girl had fulfilled her only real function:
The Good Girl is not loved for who she is. She is loved for who she makes everyone else feel safe being. And eventually, she realizes the cost of that love was herself.
