Week 16 - Burn the Good Girl
By Jennifer Dirksen · Sheer Photography, Youngstown OH · Est. read time: 4 min
Why your "nice girl" era isn't your sexy era… and what it looks like to finally close that chapter.
Let's just say what everyone's thinking but nobody posts: the version of you that kept the peace, made everyone comfortable, and stayed perfectly likable? She worked hard. She kept a lot of plates spinning. And she was completely, quietly, suffocating the part of you that actually wants to be felt.
This isn't a callout. It's a recognition. Because most women who walk into my studio have spent years being good. Good daughters, good employees, good partners, good moms. And somewhere in the middle of all that goodness… they lost the version of themselves that takes up space without apologizing for it.
"Nice is filtered. Measured. Careful. Sexy is expressed. Unapologetic. Present. You can't fully inhabit one while clinging to the other."
The difference between nice and expressed
Here's what nobody tells you in the self-help aisle: confidence isn't something you build. It's something you stop blocking.
Nice girl energy shows up as shrinking. Qualifying your opinions before you give them. Laughing off the compliment instead of just saying "thank you." Wearing the outfit that's acceptable instead of the one that makes you feel like that b*tch!
But expressed energy is when you stop filtering yourself for the comfort of the room. You say what you mean… kindly, clearly, and without the three sentence apology attached. You let people actually see you instead of the carefully managed version of you.
That's not coldness. That's not selfishness. That's just... realness. And real is magnetic in a way that "nice" never gets to be.
You can be kind and still be fully yourself
I want to be really clear here because this gets misread: burning the good girl doesn't mean becoming a b*tch. It doesn't mean blowing up your relationships or showing up reckless. It means giving yourself the same permission to be seen that you so freely give everyone else.
It means saying "actually, I don't love that" instead of "oh no it's fine, totally fine." It means wearing the thing that makes you feel alive, not just the thing that won't cause a comment. It means asking yourself, before you shrink again… am I being liked right now, or am I being real?
"The women you look at and think…. damn!!! They're not perfect. They're expressed. They're in their bodies. They're not asking for permission. And that energy is completely undeniable."
Five small shifts that change everything
You don't have to overhaul your personality. You just have to start letting more of yourself through. Here's where to begin:
Say what you actually mean… kindly, but without the qualifiers that make it smaller
Let yourself be seen in low stakes moments first: a photo, a conversation, a room you walk into differently
Wear something that feels like you… not just the version of you that's trying to not be too much
Move your body in a way that feels good, not performative, for you
Ask yourself honestly: "Am I being liked right now... or am I being real?"
What this has to do with boudoir
Everything. Literally everything.
Women don't come to Sheer because they already feel confident. They come because somewhere inside them, they know there's a version of themselves they've been quietly managing and they want, for one day, to just let her out. No filtering. No apologizing. No performing comfort for the people around them.
The magic of a boudoir session isn't the photos. (Though babe, the photos are something.) It's what happens when you spend a few hours being seen… fully, intentionally, without apology… and you realize she was there the whole time. You were just being too nice to let her show up.
That's the version of you that's been waiting. She's the one you've wanted to feel for years.
It's time to stop being so polite about it.
Ready to meet the version of yourself you've been keeping behind glass?