The Folkloric Image of the Good Girl and Its Effects on Women in the Age of the Internet

Abstract

Folklore is the unofficial culture of a society that changes over time and often reflects what a society finds important. One image of folklore is that of the "good girl." The good girl ideal is the concept that women have to be good, submissive, loving, and motherly in order to accepted by society. First provided is the history of how this folkloric image came to be shaped by Western culture, beginning with an examination of the Judeo-Christian perception of women as bad through Eve's eating of the apple. The establishment of the good girl ideal shifts and grows as time passes through the Victorian Era, first and second-wave feminism, and continues on in the present day. I wanted to examine how this centuries old expectation of women has affected women in the modern day. Using a case study approach by examining the online discourse platform Reddit, I found two subReddits aimed at conducting discourse about women's experiences. Women and men discussed women's relationships to society and how they have had to cope with the expectations of women in Western culture. What I found was that women today are being deeply affected by cultural norms established centuries ago as well as that women are using the platform of Reddit to find connection and understanding of the issues women face as a result of the folkloric good girl image.