When You’re The ‘Bad Girl’
People expect you only know how to be sexy, because you seem ‘slutty,’ because you’re an attention-seeker, because you’re shallow, stupid, unclean.
A response poem to When You’re The ‘Good Girl’ by Rania Naim.
Prelude: No one type of woman is better than the other, especially when it comes to social oppression, unfair expectations, and scrutiny. It does not matter what is our name. Good girls or bad girls, our hearts break the same.
When you’re the ‘bad girl’
they don’t think you can feel,
they don’t think you can give,
they don’t think you can think.
Because you’re too vulgar,
because you’re not soft enough,
because you’re too god damn
reckless,
and you never can make the best first
impressions
because you’re snobby,
because you’re ‘bitchy,’
because you come off as arrogant
even when you’re trying not to be,
because no one likes crazy women,
because you’re too loud,
too cold.
Too not enough and yet
too much.
When you’re the bad girl
you don’t find love,
you only cause heartbreak.
You don’t get respected,
you constantly get underestimated
because you’re not ‘the kind of girl you take home to your mom.’
You only play games, they say,
because you don’t want anything serious.
People expect you only know how to be sexy,
because you seem ‘slutty,’
because you’re an attention-seeker,
because you’re shallow, stupid, unclean.
When you’re the bad girl
you’ll always be misunderstood.
You’ll be labeled ‘the cool chic,’
maybe weird, maybe obnoxious,
but nothing more.
Never appreciated,
never given the compassion you deserve,
never getting the ones you want
because you live in a society
that worships the good and the excellent,
the modest and the humble,
the moral and the normal,
the types who don’t stir up any trouble.
When you’re the bad girl
you’ll get mocked for it,
you’ll often get blamed for it.
You’ll even question yourself
when others question you
and you might lose some people
once they hear ‘the rumors.’
But when you’re the bad girl
you learn to stop giving a fuck about what they think
or what they say.
You’ll never change yourself to fit in
or change for someone else.
You stay true to your wild heart
because you may be the reason
someone learns to distrust stereotypes
and you may be the person
someone else wishes they could freely be.
When you’re the bad girl,
you don’t have anything to prove
to anyone. Let others find the good in you
and hopefully they will see –
you were never as bad as people
assumed you to be. 
