Unfortunately, men aren’t the only ones sorting women into a “good girl”/”bad girl” dichotomy – we do it to each other, too. Oppressive discourse can be so insidious, you may not even notice it until someone you respect calls it out. Maybe the artists, labels, and other music bigwigs will see our protestations – but it’s perhaps even more important for regular people in our lives to hear us decrying these tropes. It can be powerful, then, for consumers of pop music to publicly kick up a fuss when songs perpetuate tropes we disagree with. A world full of harmful media messages certainly doesn’t make it easier for men to notice and confront their own sexist biases. Someone may not even be aware he’s enacting toxic masculinity in his relationships, and it can take some hard psychological work to figure that out and change it. This ideal is expressed over and over again in popular media: it’s why Sandy gets a “bad girl” makeover to please Danny in Grease, it’s why Prince Charming doesn’t notice Cinderella until she’s cleaned the dirt off her face and thrown on a ball gown, and it’s why Meghan Trainor says her body type is OK precisely because “boys like a little more booty to hold at night.” Yet a woman who rejects the male narrative and creates her own is immediately labeled as wayward what happened to the goodness of doing you?Īs our society grows, and as men more frequently self-identify as feminist, it is more and more important to remember that a focus is not just the empowerment of women but also the honest, soul-searching reflection of men. It always seems to come back to ownership and control – they want me to cater to their needs because our culture tells them I would defer to them if I really cared about them.

I’ve had boyfriends shame me in similar ways for going out and having fun without them, even when I was just spending time with friends.

Good girls soundtrack