I think of my mom saying, “It’s nice to be nice to the nice,” and telling me, when I was a child, to “Be nice.” Be a nice girl. Do things that nice girls do, like brush their hair, keep their legs together, smile. (You guessed it: sometimes I don’t do these things.)
In one of the Facebooks groups I”m a part of, some members recently shared a thought about being nice versus being kind.
Some linked to this post on Woolgathering & Wildcrafting who asked
“Instead of teaching our children to be nice girls, what if we raised them to be kind women? Women whose goodness depended not on how others saw them, but how they decided to carry themselves in the world?”
It also made me think about how I talk to Wee One. I have told her to “be nice” a few times when she is a little rougher on a smaller child, but I have changed that, and I stress being kind.
Because nice people smile and go along. Nice girls don’t make waves, especially about things that matter, like social justice or their own lives. Not nice people are the ones who are things happen and better.
Fuck nice.
I Didn't Just Wake Up This Morning With A Craving 