Do Good Girls Win Anymore? [Diary of the Undateable]

October 12, 2012 5:00 pm     Posted in Homepage Exclusive, Reality, Relationships, Top Stories  Khalea - Howard University g+ page


By Khalea

I spent a few days in Germany as part of a program for young journalists. In between visits to various television stations, newspapers and political institutions, I noticed that love was in the air…young couples at Oktoberfest snogging their drunken lives away, PDA on the trains and buses, older married couples holding hands and leisurely strolling throughout the streets. It made me kind of sad.

I missed Carlos. We talked almost every night before I left. We were finally, finally getting closer emotionally…what I’ve wanted for the past few months. I promised myself that I wouldn’t let my thoughts of him ruin my experience. And they didn’t. But whenever there was a lull in the day, my mind would slip back stateside. I’d wonder what he was doing and if he missed me too.

I was thinking about him on a long, scenic train ride from Munich to Berlin. Luckily, my seatmate Brad kept me occupied. We were talking about our favorite songs and the artists that we’re into. Brad really likes Rihanna. He was going on about her music and her undeniable sex appeal.

“Rihanna is crazy!” I joked. “Y’all love crazy though, right?”

He agreed with me. Brad explained that bad girls are the ones that have a certain magnetic pull that keeps guys coming back. They’re impulsive. They’re funny. They’re wild and sexy and intriguing.

Sigh. It seems like sweet girls rarely win. The bad girls with all of their trickery and flirting and mind games get all of the play.

My friend Tasia thinks that guys are afraid of “good” girls because they’re afraid to be themselves. This spring, she met an awesome guy while studying abroad. And when I say awesome, I’m not exaggerating – he was smart, well-dressed, in a prestigious fraternity and extremely polite. They would have been perfect together! The night before they left London, he confessed his feelings for T. When she asked why he didn’t do it sooner, he said that he’s just not good enough for her.

“You’re such a great girl,” he said. “I know myself and I know the women that I’ve been with before. And you’re not like them.”

I’m sure that his reasons were legit in his mind, but it still sucks. It’s so backwards to me. Brad explained the appeal of bad girls, and I guess that I get it. But if you have a genuinely kind, modest and mild-mannered young lady standing right in front of you, then why would you not jump at the chance to be with her?

We revisited her story before I left. “Guys are so scared to be comfortable,” she told me over coffee at our campus Starbucks. “It’s like whenever they relax, they have to jump up and keep on moving again. Nice girls add to their dimensions and compliment their personalities. But the guys that we deal with aren’t ready for that yet.”

I think that most of us have glimmers of bad girliness inside of us. And that’s fine! I don’t let it out in my art or on Twitter or in the way that I dress. But that doesn’t mean that I’m not as exciting or mysterious or as alluring as the next bad girl, either. I guess.

When she’s not watching for Blue Ivy sightings or doing some serious Facebook creeping, Khalea moonlights as a print journalism major at the REAL HU, Howard University. Follow her on Twitter at @letsbeKHAlear, or feel free to Twatch. Whatever works for you.

[Lead image via Shutterstock]

32 Comments on "Do Good Girls Win Anymore? [Diary of the Undateable]"

  1. Jasmine - Northern Arizona University says:
    Fri, 12th Oct 20127:31 pm 

    a) It sounds like Tasia dodged a bullet. He pretty much admitted that he's emotionally immature and that, had they been together, he would've been self-sabotaging the whole time.

    b) There are tons of guys out there who like the reserved introverted bookworms who prefer to twerk to Rihanna in the privacy of their own home rather than out at the clubs. The idea that all women have to be brash, overtly sexual, and a "bad b**ch" is false and anyone who perpetuates that myth is engaging in some low-key casual misogyny and/or seeking to debase ladies to objects for the male gaze (which isn't to say that anyone who has all of those traits is only doing it to attract men, but is to say that insinuating that those traits are *mandatory* is very suspect). Guys are just as varied in their preferences and ladies are in ours. The more extroverted girls do have an advantage because they appear to be more approachable, and therefore do attract more guys in general (but I've also found that my friends who are more outgoing also tend to attract more riffraff who only value their appearance and/or underestimate/undervalue their intelligence).

    While there may be a difference in the quantity of men that flock to "good" girls vs. "bad" girls, the quality is suspect (After all, who has Rihanna been with – Breezy, Drake, Matt Kemp (snooooze)…like, she's not exactly messing with the highest caliber of dudes here).

    Basically, dating sucks for everyone, just in different ways.

  2. Erica says:
    Sun, 14th Oct 20124:09 pm 

    Read "Why Men Love Bitches" by Sherry Argrov. Thank me later.

  3. Derek says:
    Sun, 14th Oct 20129:55 pm 

    Just because some men have grown up nervous and twitchy doesn't mean you should modify your own behavior to accommodate them. Shy, good girls are in high demand – but only by the kind of men that enjoy you for your own naturally cute, feminine selves. These days, it's much more rare to find a girl who isn't brash, loud, crass, and swears a good deal. Don't be discouraged, it will happen. And when it does, having been polite, sweet, and wonderful will make all the difference to the right guy.

    Take care now.

  4. Alex- University of South Carolina says:
    Sun, 14th Oct 201210:46 pm 

    Jasmine, you're my hero.

  5. glitter in the air says:
    Mon, 15th Oct 20128:20 pm 

    it depends what the guys looking for. every guy at one point like the "bad girl" but they never marry the bad girl. they f* the bad girl and marry the good girl.

  6. 'Ria says:
    Tue, 16th Oct 20128:59 pm 

    So…first of all, if your list of requirements for a guy to be awesome is "…smart, well-dressed, in a prestigious fraternity and extremely polite", you are causing some of your own problems with just the men you choose. Personally, my list is "a deeply decent human being who is intelligent (including emotionally), self-aware, a good communicator, with a good sense of humor, interested in exploring a relationship and oh yeah, whom I find attractive." Those are rare. Very rare. And it takes getting to actually know them to discover all these things about them. But trust me, they're worth the effort, while getting hung up on guys who got their heads up their prestigious fraternity butts is really not.

    Secondly, why does "shy" equal "good"? Can a girl be outgoing, opinionated, unafraid to dance in public and still be a "good girl"?

  7. Sophia says:
    Sun, 21st Oct 20125:18 pm 

    Really? I wish what you wrote was true… Shy, good girls are in high demand?? Ok, where are the guys who want those of kinds of girls?? Unfortunately, guys don't care about intelligence and personality…

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