I wasn't nice, I was a female.

Since I was a child, one of my traits was being nice. I'm nice, my mom is nice, my sisters are nice, and my female friends are no exception. Growing old, I've noticed how the word "nice" had a different meaning for females than their peers from males. "Nice" wasn't a lousy lazy way to describe a woman: it was a part of her entity, a part of who she is. However, I've never heard that a man I knew was "nice," never just nice; he was strong, generous, and ambitious. But nice was said with a very bored expression. He is, meh, nice.

And it has hit me; I had to be nice because I was fed niceness, choking on it like it's the last meal I will ever be granted on Earth. I was taught that it is a part of my identity as a female: a quality that if I lacked, I'm less of a human, less of a woman." As young girls, we are taught to be quiet, sit straight, never object, and to, almost, never defend ourselves. Even when the situation requires loudness and aggression, we can't use them. Because "you can't risk losing a part of your self-respect in a fight," they said.

However, when a girl got sexually-harassed in the street and cursed, people blamed her; because she wasn't being nice. When a guy, sort of, forced a girl into doing something she doesn't approve of, he used the card of "niceness." And when I needed to object to something that someone uttered, I couldn't; because my mom looked at me and mumbled "be nice." As a female, you didn't choose to be nice; it wasn't an individual trait, but rather, it became a role you have to fill.

What aggravates the situation even more is how the definition of "niceness" got distorted to include acts of passiveness and frailty. The old saying "frailty, thy name is women" could've been replaced by "the gentle sex" only if this "gentleness" included extra emotional and physical labor done by females. "Niceness" has cost us the opportunity to speak, fight back, protest, and go the extra mile. Because the extra mile is not extra nice: It is extra intimidating, revolutionary, and compulsive!

But lately, and proudly, women has been making the word "nice" their own: the niceness that doesn't describe weakness, the niceness that describes passionate, strong, and compassionate women: Women who aren't afraid of being too assertive, women who turn the world upside down, and feel a brand new modified "niceness" about it.