Why Good Girls Go for Bad Guys

Before anything else, three disclaimers:

Number one, I’m not trying to do a Carrie Bradshaw with this piece. Sure, I love Sex and the City, and I love Carrie Bradshaw’s character, but I’m not gonna go over the top and talk about sex and all that. It’s not my style. I’m writing this for my friends Joval and Edsel (who refused to be mentioned… hello guys!) who asked me to write about something “edgy”. I guess this is as edgy as I can get. For now, at least.

Number two, I’m not exactly a good girl, and I’m not pretending to be. But if you take everyone in the entire universe and arrange them on a spectrum, then I guess I’d very much still fall on the good girl side of the line. For now, at least.

And, number three, I’m straddling between being “general” about the topic… and not generalizing such that people get typecast and offended. If I somehow strike a few nerves here and there, then I’d like to apologize in advance. This is just my view (and not necessarily my experience) of things; please don’t take me so seriously.

So why do good girls go for bad guys?

That’s one question I’ve encountered countless times in my young life, and it’s usually asked by the good guys who never seem to get the girls they want—because these girls fall for the rough-and-tumble kind.

It’s also a question that I could not, for the life of me, understand back then. I loved good guys, so I didn’t understand why other good girls didn’t. I loved how they always looked so clean and fresh, as if they’d just stepped out of the shower. I loved how their clothes looked so neatly pressed all the time, as if they jumped out from a Marks & Spencer catalog or shop window. I loved how I could take them home to Mom and Dad… and not have to endure an hour of questions about why he dressed that way, or what he did for a living, or what his parents did, and so on.

I just wanted the Pinoy—or, rather, the tisoy—version of a Ken doll; someone who was sweet, charming, gentlemanly, romantic, stable, secure, and oh-so-safe. The kind you’d just want to cuddle up and spend a long, rainy day at home with…

And then I realized why good girls wanted bad guys.

Good girls are sick of staying at home. They’ve done it—and done it well—their whole lives. They’ve stuck to the image imposed on them by good ol’ Mom and Dad; they got the good grades, hung out with the right friends, chose the right career, did the right things. They’ve got “perfect-girlfriend-and-ideal-wife” stamped on their foreheads, and it kills them because it means 20-30-40 more years of staying at home and taking care of a husband and family. Just like they’re supposed to.

When a good girl looks at a bad guy, she sees beyond his rough, unshaven, rebellious exterior. She sees the kind of life that she’s always wanted to sample: a life where she’s free to experiment and test the limits of her potential (and capacity); a life where she makes the rules, and maybe breaks them once in a while; a life free of any expectations but her own, where she’s free to fall and get up, only to fall all over again.

When a good girl looks at a bad guy, she sees sides of herself that she was not allowed to experience and explore, sides that were repressed by the expectations of her family, her neighborhood, and this whole chauvinist society.

The bad guy frees her from all her neuroses and allows her to experience life just as it is—not as it should be. Sure, he breaks the rules and gets into a little trouble once in a while, but he still lives. And she realizes that you don’t have to live a perfect, scratch-free life. In fact, you need to get scratched, you need to get bruised and hit on the head once in a while for you to experience the fullness of life. Laughter and tears. Joy and pain. Victory and suffering. It’s all part of the package.

Good girls who go for bad guys have realized that the best-tasting meals are sometimes cooked with the weirdest and ickiest of ingredients—stuff that you wouldn’t dare touch on its own. But they want the experience of the meal… so they take all the shit that goes with it anyway.

My friend Trin put it excellently when she once told me, “It’s all shitty. It’s just a matter of knowing what kind of shit you can put up with.”

So… If you’re gonna get some shit anyway, then you might as well let it be shit that you can enjoy… right?

(Written: A Spoonful of Sugar, 2 September 2003)