The Mask of “Good Girl”

Drop good girl. Drop her entirely. She is the number one killer of arousal, the dam that holds back the flood of sensation, the polite veneer covering something raw and real. She is the refinement of lying, the socially acceptable face of repression.  

We all know what’s under the surface. We can feel it. You can feel it. And yet, the good girl remains—smiling, accommodating, keeping everything contained. She exists in many forms, adapting to whatever version of acceptability the culture allows. Sometimes she wears exhaustion like armor, weighed down by the cost of containment. Other times she performs irritation, speaking everything except what pulses beneath. What she is not—what she is rarely allowed to be—is pure arousal.

Sit with a woman, any woman, and feel. If you are truly present, if you are truly awake to sensation, you will know exactly how much arousal is in the space between you. It is unmistakable, humming just beneath the surface. And then, she will talk about the weather, or her sick dog, or how tired she is. She will meet you somewhere safe, somewhere that lets her hold onto her mask. She will do what she has been taught—distract, contain, redirect, manage.  

This is where intimacy is lost.  

It is lost in the gap between what is felt and what is expressed. Arousal rises to one level, but the expression is flattened, obscured, redirected into something more socially acceptable. That gap—between what is and what is shown—is what keeps everything dull, disconnected, lifeless. And this isn’t just about diminishing arousal; some women amplify it, perform it, act as if there’s more than there is. Both are distortions. Both are a way of avoiding what is actually present.  

But when the arousal felt matches the arousal expressed, something else happens. There is a perfect charge, a seamless current of connection, an ignition. The lights come on. Time stretches. Space opens. You become merged with experience itself. That is intimacy—not the performance of closeness, not the careful curation of what is acceptable, but the unfiltered expression of exactly what is.  

So drop good girl. Drop the softening, the modulation, the attempt to be more or less than you are. Drop the habit of shrinking or shaping yourself to fit. Just be—without valence, without apology, without holding back. The world doesn’t need more good girls—it needs women unafraid to let life move through them.