Yes-Girl Learns to say No.
Heather Neale
I was expressing my frustration and feelings of violation by starving my body completely

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Here’s you looking at me, the quickly recovering but still less-than-perfect ‘yes’ girl. The typically passive-aggressive twenty-first century woman who has kids, works full time, dresses in style and maintains a stress free, anything-goes smile, while secretly and desperately seeking happiness. Happiness. That external abstract and vague-as-hell concept we often seem to translate into love life, nice car, cute pet, manicures, career status, or even faith.

For years I looked at myself in the mirror, egging on my sadistic side- the side that internalized the anger, shame, and hurt that was shoved down with smiles, and spat it out onto the bathroom mirror screaming, "YOU FAT COW." I would stand there and convince myself of all the reasonable reasons why skipping breakfast was a good idea. If you can't control the outside world, control yourself. Hunger strike. Punishment for good behaviour.

And no one was the wiser, at first. My lecherous boss making eyes from across the room, would be greeted with a smile. (What else was a yes-girl supposed to do?) My staunchy professor barking at me that my question regarding Saussurian linguistic theory was redundant, (when it clearly wasn’t judging from the puzzled looks around the room), was enough to warrant profuse apologies and an abstinence from question-asking for the rest of the semester, at my own learning expense.

Of course I looked empowered. Trendy clothes, a cocky strut, and an elevated vocabulary. I would come across as the confident, up-and-comer of the academic world. But all of these ‘nice girl’ responses to what I now consider grossly inappropriate behaviour, were poisoning me. The breakfast I skipped turned into two breakfasts, and in no time I wasn’t eating it ever; I was expressing my frustration and feelings of violation by starving my body completely. I could no longer maintain even the exterior appearance of confidence. Any mask I had worn was now exposed like my bones were.
Skeletal and ‘nice’ to everyone, wispy hair that had lost its shine and volume, a quiet voice muted by repression, I had ultimately done to myself what so many other inappropriate comments had been working to achieve. I had taken away my own power.
Enabled myself to fall rapidly into the ultimate victim role that some women play so well. And I had no one to blame- not even myself.

On one hand, girls are socialized to be nice to others, to accommodate, and put their own feelings below those of their peers. On the other extreme, they are told to reject that socialization they grew up with, (the daddy-knows-best-so-go-get-his-coffee mentality that is still a reality for many.)
They are told to be aggressive and put their needs first. That they don’t need a man to be happy. But that they are cougars at 30 if they don’t have one. That they should be happy with their bodies. But to aspire to look like Naomi Campbell. All this does is create an internal conflict of values, a confusion about what is right and what is wrong.

It is crazy-making, and really does make people starved for acceptance or happiness or sanity. Myself included. There’s no happy moral ending here. No real mozarella moment where the 22-minute world crisis DJ experiences gets tied up in a nice big red bow by Bob Sagget. Just an observation about the world. That it really is a little backwards if I’m not the only one who knows this feeling.

© Heather Neale October 2002
email: senoritaheather@hotmail.com

Heather has been previously published in the Times Colonist, Edmonton Journal, Chaos, The Marlet, the Ubyssey, The Icelandic Canadian, and am the author of several text books

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