Breaking Rules is Legal
Updated: Sep 11
At my yoga studio, there's a huge container of wipes near the door.
They are offered to any person who wishes to use them.
These wipes come in one long roll, each separated from the next by a perforated line—a suggestion of where one wipe ends and the next begins.
On the container is a hand-written sign:
PLEASE TAKE ONE WIPE.
So, naturally, I obeyed the rule.
The pull of the Good Girl identity is strong.
The problem was, one wipe was never enough.
I would start at the top of my mat, wiping away the sweat from an hour of heated yoga.
And three swipes in, the flimsy 3 x 5 inch piece of material would roll over on itself—becoming a crumpled, gum-ball-sized, dry mess that I battled with for the entire length of my 71-inch mat.
All of the peace and stillness I had come to the 60-minute class to experience was coming undone during this 60-second compliance exercise.
Until one day I thought:
Wait. Why am I doing this?
I pay to take classes here.
My mat needs to be cleaned.
One wipe does not clean my mat.
I need four.
So I took four.
And guess what happened?
Nothing.
No one stopped me.
No one reprimanded me.
No one even noticed.
My membership wasn't revoked.
I cleaned my mat and went home.
And I've been thinking about that stupid container of wipes ever since.
Because how many times a day do we willingly participate in a choice that doesn't work for us—simply because someone, somewhere, told us those were the rules?
How many directions do we follow without question?
How many instructions do we confuse with authority?
How many preferences do we interpret as policies?
How many conventions do we treat as law?
How many expectations do we mistake for obligations?
And how much of our lives do we spend allowing others to control us?
Women are exceptionally good at rule following.
We are rewarded for our obedience from the time we are little girls.
Wait your turn.
Raise your hand.
Follow directions.
Share with others.
Don't interrupt.
Don't make a scene.
Don't inconvenience anyone.
Don't ask for too much.
Don't take more than you need.
Don't be difficult.
Don't make anyone uncomfortable.
Be good.
And eventually, no one has to tell us the rules anymore.
Because we perpetually hold ourselves in compliance.
We learn to anticipate what's expected of us.
We adjust our behavior to satisfy every circumstance.
We become our own enforcement mechanism.
Somewhere along the way, we collapsed law, policy, convention, preference, expectation and conditioning into one giant category:
Rules I must follow.
And that is where we've lost something.
Because a rule is not inherently an authority.
There are—of course—rules that exist for very good reasons.
Laws that protect people.
Policies that create safety.
Boundaries that deserve to be honored.
Agreements we've consented to uphold.
But a preference is not a mandate.
An expectation is not an obligation.
A suggestion is not an order.
And breaking a rule isn't illegal.
Sometimes it's just making a better choice.
But, over time, tiny acts of defiance can feel dysregulating in our bodies.
Because women haven't simply been taught that following rules makes us compliant.
We've been taught that following rules makes us good.
Good girls obey.
Good students follow the rules.
Good employees adhere to the chain of command.
Good mothers meet society's standards.
Good wives keep the house running.
Good women know what's expected of them—and behave accordingly.
So breaking a rule can feel like something much bigger than breaking a rule.
It can feel like becoming a bad person.
Which is how you end up standing in a yoga studio trying to clean an entire sweaty mat with one increasingly useless wipe because a piece of paper taped to a plastic container told you to.
The rule wasn't actually controlling me.
My Good Girl identity was.
That's a cage.
And its one we've been building—and locking ourselves into—for millennia.
We make our male colleague think our idea is his.
We maintain a fully stocked and organized home, without question.
We keep showing up for monthly dinners with friends we've outgrown.
We don't burn a bridge with a boss who made our life a living hell.
We manage our children's and spouses' social calendars, often forgetting our own.
We don't allow a single thing to fall through the cracks.
All the while, ignoring that we are cracking under the never-ending pressure.
Millions of tiny acts of obedience.
Millions of moments when we override our own knowing because something outside of us appears to have more authority than we do.
We cannot solely break out of the cage through enormous acts of rebellion.
We must practice our way out.
We practice noticing. We practice questioning.
We practice discerning.
We practice asking:
Who made this rule?
Why does it exist?
Who does it serve?
What actually happens if I don't follow it?
And maybe most importantly, we ask:
Does this rule deserve my obedience?
Because every time you break an arbitrary rule—and don't fall apart—something shifts.
You realize that the consequence you were anticipating may never have existed.
You understand how much authority you were deferring to everyone else.
You discover that some of the bars of the cage were never locked.
You trust yourself to discern the difference between a boundary that deserves your respect and a rule that deserves your interrogation.
Rule breaking isn't illegal.
It's the practice of reclaiming your power of choice.
Practice trusting yourself.
Practice questioning authority.
Practice discovering which rules actually matter.
Practice remembering that obedience and goodness were never the same thing.
Practice taking four wipes.
Your Good Girl identity has kept you "in line" for a lifetime.
She's not in charge anymore.
I'm practicing my way out. Come practice with me inside the HYPE WOMEN Community.
→ Come join me.
And if my writing has made you feel seen, I want to make sure I can keep doing it.
xoxo,
Erin
This speaks to me on every level you describe in effective detail. My whole life of being a good girl following every rule - from a paper sheet taped to a bucket of wipes to the rules at work, etc. I defer authority to far too many - just because that’s what’s been ingrained in me. Thank you for yet another seed - as you mention, micro acts will add up but it’ll take practice. The “bad person” feeling is so real, but so stupid.