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The week’s most remarkable news is that Emilie Nereng, food influencer, entrepreneur and Farmen celebrity, was diagnosed with “good girl syndrome” in a blood test.
As if being good was a disease. Well, either the doctor must have been crazy or Nereng misunderstood.
Firstly, “good girl” is not a syndrome in the diagnosis book at all (fortunately), secondly, this personality type cannot be determined by a blood test.
Being a “good girl” is a personality type, not a diagnosis.
And the personality type should be celebrated, not problematized.
Read also: Syndrome statement causes doctor to react: – A terrible expression
Smart girls have one problem
Smart girls make Norway go round. They are the ones who remind the rest of us of important deadlines, or simply fix a problem when they discover it.
The good girls call on Monday when they have promised to call on Monday.
Where would Norwegian business be without such people? Some of them are also men, just to say the least.
Smart girls should get boss jobs more often and they should earn more.
Smart girls have only one problem: They are so smart that they let their other, more dominant colleagues shine and take the credit.
But if their bosses are wise enough, they will lift up the good girls and give them better pay, solely because it will be expensive for the company if they quit.
Elin Ørjasæter
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Elin Ørjasæter is a lecturer in HR and working life at Kristiania University College, and has written a number of books on personnel management and employment law. She is active as a lecturer and has had a number of appearances in NRK and TV2, as well as in debate and news programs – as well as in reality and entertainment.
Reinpikka women’s oppression
The term “good girl” implies a remarkable sickening of being good.
Of course, good girls can have mental problems, just like everyone else. But then it comes from the fact that some of them are predisposed to psychological problems, quite independently of the fact that they are also good.
The good story about “good girl stretching too far” is therefore just that: a good story that may strike a chord with someone, but which is not so common that it can be categorized as a social problem.
The term good girls should not be associated with anything negative at all.
When the Solberg government set up a public committee on equality challenges among children and young people, they kept coming back to the term “good girl” in the report that followed (NOU 2019:19).
The paradox, that girls do better than boys at school, while at the same time they report more psychological problems such as depression and performance anxiety, has created the impression that it is the same girls who do well (“good”), who also have psychological problems.
But that is completely wrong.
It is rather the case that it is the “not good” girls who are depressed and have performance anxiety, while the really good ones actually do very well. Just ask Nav. It is not the school lights that dominate the disability statistics among young people, nor among girls.
The committee behind the NOU 2019:19 referred to researchers who ask us to stop using the expression “good girl”. The expression indicates that there is a problem when girls are good and it really isn’t.
It is pure female oppression, to make girls’ cleverness a problem.
Good girls: Keep it up! Being skilled is only and exclusively positive. Conscientious and decent people, with good control over their own lives, are what make AS Norge go around.
Emilie Nereng is a “good girl”
Emilie Nereng herself is precisely an example of being clever.
When Unni Askeland ruled the kitchen in Farmen, the pots were left with rotten food, because Unni thought washing dishes was boring. She was more concerned with “Mentor” being handsome than she was with getting the weekly assignment completed.
Emilie would do a much better job as head chef.
But she didn’t let go until the very end of her stay.
Was it because Emilie Nereng was too modest “good girl” that she didn’t let go? No, that responsibility does not lie with her, but with all the others at the Farmen farm.
The conflict-averse group of celebrities never hit the table and said the obvious: Let Emilie be responsible for the food, because she does a better job than Unni.
Where Emilie is modest and skilled, Unni was dominant but lazy.
The responsibility for ensuring that the most talented get the most responsibility lies with all of us. Raise the flag and break the ground for the good girls!
