The Curse of the Good Girl Quotes

“When kindness comes at the expense of truth, it is not a kindness worth having.”
― Rachel Simmons, The Curse of the Good Girl: Raising Authentic Girls with Courage and Confidence

“Many of the most accomplished girls are disconnecting from the truest parts of themselves, sacrificing essential self-knowledge to the pressure of who they think they ought to be.”
― Rachel Simmons, The Curse of the Good Girl: Raising Authentic Girls with Courage and Confidence

“Shame is a virus that creates paralysis in its hosts. When you're busy telling yourself what a bad person you are, you expend most of your energy obsessing over your self- not what you may have done wrong, not what you can do to fix it. For this reason, shame creates a moat around girls' potential. It limits their ability or willingness to face challenges. It makes them want to be alone, isolating them from friends, their most important buffer against stress. Shame is therefore a major threat to girls' resilience.”
― Rachel Simmons, The Curse of the Good Girl: Raising Authentic Girls with Courage and Confidence

“When kindness comes at the expense of truth, it is not a kindness worth having. And when generosity leads to silence or abuse, it is not a generosity worth giving.”
― Rachel Simmons, The Curse of the Good Girl: Raising Authentic Girls with Courage and Confidence

“Girls like Caroline and Lily are constantly performing, as much for the Good Girl they think they should be as for the adults and peers who look on. They have spent their lives growing internally dependent on external rewards: pats on the back A's, club presidencies, Most Valuable Player trophies. They become more concerned with how they appear and should be than who they are What other think and feel replaces what is true for them.”
― Rachel Simmons, The Curse of the Good Girl: Raising Authentic Girls with Courage and Confidence

“Parents are satisfied only if their children are gifted or exceptional (or diagnosed with a treatable problem that the right pill cocktail can restore to excellence).”
― Rachel Simmons, The Curse of the Good Girl: Raising Authentic Girls with Courage and Confidence

“Perceiving a choice between her feelings and her relationships, Dana chose to be liked by others. But the self she displayed was a mask of the person she though others wanted her to be. The Curse of the Good Girl obscured and shamed the most important parts of who she was.”
― Rachel Simmons, The Curse of the Good Girl: Raising Authentic Girls with Courage and Confidence

“...with her self-esteem perilously balanced on her excellence, she could only interpret failure as catastrophic. Lilly shamed herself when she made a mistake, becoming upset not only about her performance but about who she was as a human being. ...She reached her heights at a steep internal price. Her Good Girl thinking forced her to walk an unforgiving line; one misstep would plummet her to the snapping jaws of failure. ...Her unreasonable expectations kept her shackled to failure, preventing her from shaking off a mistake and moving forward quickly.”
― Rachel Simmons, The Curse of the Good Girl: Raising Authentic Girls with Courage and Confidence

“Many teachers, especially those in more affluent communities, believe they are treated no better than a customer-service representative at a store.”
― Rachel Simmons, The Curse of the Good Girl: Raising Authentic Girls with Courage and Confidence

“There is nothing wrong with being a nice person, nor is it my intent to undermine the unique sensibilities of women and girls. But girls need to have the tools to say no, to ask for what they need, and to say what they think. Too many girls and women walk away from conversations muttering to themselves about what they really wanted to say. When kindness comes at the expense of truth, it is not a kindness worth having. And when generosity leads to silence or abuse, it is not a generosity worth giving.”
― Rachel Simmons, The Curse of the Good Girl: Raising Authentic Girls with Courage and Confidence

“The pressure on mothers to be selfless at home means that too many daughters discover their leadership potential only after walking out the front door. What would it mean to have leadership begin at home?”
― Rachel Simmons, The Curse of the Good Girl: Raising Authentic Girls with Courage and Confidence

“Relationships are a girl’s primary classroom, and what they learn about responsibility in relationship forms the foundation of lifelong habits. Honesty is as much a skill as it is a value. Admitting a wrong is a high-stakes, nerve-racking experience; the longer girls go without these formative moments, the more terrifying they will seem. In confrontation, the need to be seen as Good—and the fear of being exposed as Bad—will pull girls’ strings like a puppeteer. If girls feel they cannot be straightforward about their mistakes, they will hide them and take their true selves underground. And if they feel unable to own mistakes, they will not feel comfortable learning to make them.”
― Rachel Simmons, The Curse of the Good Girl: Raising Authentic Girls with Courage and Confidence