Alena Papayanis is a professor of Arts and Humanities at Humber College in Toronto.
Niceness is celebrated in our culture. But as a recovering people-pleaser, I am deeply suspicious of it.
People-pleasers are nice to a fault, saying yes even when they want to say no and making their needs invisible to others and to themselves. People-pleasers are most comfortable when they take up the least amount of space, emotional or otherwise. Nice is passive-aggressive and doesn’t tell you the truth. A nice person wouldn’t tell you that you have something stuck in your teeth. I know this because a few years ago, I would’ve let you walk around all day with that speck lodged between your pearly whites. So beware, because people-pleasers are everywhere – at the office, in your local coffee shop, maybe even sitting across from you at the kitchen table right now. Or maybe you are a people-pleaser.
This is especially likely if you are a woman, as gender norms skew girls toward people-pleasing behaviours by socializing us to be small and quiet, pleasant and accommodating. A 2022 YouGov survey showed that of the 1,000 adult Americans who wholeheartedly self-identified as people-pleasers (49 per cent), 56 per cent of them were women. Girls learn to be nice from a young age through a series of unfortunate events: forced physical contact with a family member who makes them uncomfortable, an emphasis on manners and obedience, or cultural expectations that characterize women as soft and giving and inherently subservient. I’m not sure if I’m more angry about having been given these messages or about having believed them.
I was hoping that things were different now, but I was recently disappointed while buying clothes online for my daughter. The girls’ shirts had phrases such as “forever positive” and “kindness club” on them, compared with boys’ shirts, which had sayings that asked and implied more of them: “bound for glory,” “NASA” or simply, “genius.” These shirts represent a broader cultural pattern whereby we police girls’ behaviour and encourage them to be warm and supportive – to be a ray of sunshine, but not the sun itself.
But I’m very happy to report that I’m kind of mean now. I’ve started to ask for more and to take up more space, sometimes literally. I’ve pressed my legs up against “man-spread” legs on the TTC more times than I can count – and this isn’t because I like physical contact with strange men on public transit. I’ve fought for elbow room on airplane armrests when stuck between two men as if my life depended on it because it felt like I was fighting a bigger fight. This is my space, too, I say with the pressure of my thigh or elbow into the space they feel entitled to. It felt like a battle I had to win rather than something I could simply ask for. One time, I imagined myself standing up and giving an impassioned speech to the whole plane, ranting about how these armrests were a microcosm for society where women have to fight to take up space. I imagined unleashing my frustration and all the other women agreeing and then reclaiming all of the armrests on the plane. Most men don’t realize how much frustration women are hiding, and most women keep it inside.
Sure, I want my daughter to have manners – to say “please” and “thank you” when appropriate, the same as any child – but I don’t want her to feel that she needs to be “nice” or swallow her discomfort so that an adult doesn’t feel scorned. After all, shouldn’t the adult be better prepared to handle the rejection than a child to handle the discomfort? I don’t want her to think that her needs are any less important, because they aren’t.
I’ve spent the past few years trying to undo my own habit of being too nice, one that was an essential part of my personality. People-pleasers should be less concerned with being nice and more focused on being honest. We have to become more comfortable with the discomfort our truth may cause. Of course, there are some situations where our social location – our race, class, sexuality, gender identity, or ability – makes honesty impossible without risking our livelihood or safety. Sometimes “nice” is the only way to get ourselves out of, or through, an impossible situation.
And I’m not proposing that I, or any other people-pleaser, become cruel. I’m advocating for honesty and bravery, for being bigger and louder. I’m advocating for caring less about what other people think, and, despite knowing what people might think or feel, speaking anyways. I’m sure that none of the people who have changed history for the better – who won civil rights – were people-pleasers. They were “mean”; they were truth-speakers and naysayers. And “nice” won’t win trans kids basic human rights or women the right to their own bodies when confronted with an unwanted pregnancy. It’s going to take people who are comfortable causing discomfort by pointing out errors in our thinking, the ignorance of our school curriculums, the hypocrisy of our laws – or something as simple as a speck in our teeth.