“Men always say that as the defining compliment, don’t they? She’s a cool girl. Being the Cool Girl means I am a hot, brilliant, funny woman who adores football, poker, dirty jokes, and burping, who plays video games, drinks cheap beer…and jams hot dogs and hamburgers into her mouth like she’s hosting the world’s biggest culinary gang bang while somehow maintaining a size 2, because Cool Girls are above all hot. Hot and understanding. Cool Girls never get angry; they only smile in a chagrined, loving manner and let their men do whatever they want. Go ahead, s*** on me, I don’t mind, I’m the Cool Girl.
– Gillian Flynn, Gone Girl
Whatever your opinions on the rest of Gone Girl (the novel or the recently released feature film), I imagine that it would be difficult for a vast majority of young women to argue that this scathing quote does not resonate. Perhaps you recognize this archetype of the “cool girl” in relation to yourself—as something you have felt pressure to be, something you actively aspire to (secretly, of course), something you reject, or maybe even something you’ve convinced people you that you are.
Or perhaps this quote calls to mind other females: the wannabe “cool girls” whom you gleefully mock for “forcing it” as well as the charmed young women who—although you’ve painstakingly inspected their social media for evidence to the contrary—seem to authentically fit the ideal. The media isn’t immune either: think Cameron Diaz in There’s Something About Mary, Mila Kunis in Forgetting Sarah Marshall, and Zooey Deschanel in 500 Days of Summer. Whatever your associations with this archetype happen to be, I dare you to deny that you know exactly the type of girl that Gillian Flynn is talking about.
Given that we are continually bombarded with messages reinforcing the mythic “cool girl” as the pinnacle of 21st-century young womanhood, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that this archetype so powerfully impacts our psyches and behavior. Although the idealized “cool girl” by definition does not exist in reality, she nevertheless casts a long shadow over society at large. She is effortlessly beautiful, tirelessly entertaining, and relentlessly accommodating. She is the dominant male fantasy embodied: a creature who seamlessly swaps out female “shrill” for masculine “cool”, all while conforming to conventional standards of feminine desirability. It’s not hard to see her appeal; she’s irresistible. In a society that still primarily judges women by the degree to which men find them attractive, being awarded the mantle of “cool girl” is essentially akin to receiving the Nobel prize of socially acceptable womanhood.
Who is this elusive figure? Let’s start with appearances: While “cool girls” are, as Gillian Flynn so astutely notes, “always hot”, the tricky thing about recognizing one is that she can shape-shift. (Although, it must be noted—her actual “shape” must not shift into anything beyond size-four territory. And even four is pushing it.)
Is the guy she’s into a sports fan? Well, then, she just so happens to love the Pats, hot dogs, keg stands, and pearl earrings with baseball caps! Is he more of a record-store type? She’s looking for the Pixies’ discography and wondering if he could help her find it. Or is he the type who prefers a clean-cut crowd? She summers in the Hamptons, adores Lilly Pulitzer, and grew up with a lacrosse stick in her manicured hands.
We love to hate the successful “cool girls” because they seem to have it all figured out, and even more infuriatingly, to have done so effortlessly.
Yet this illusion of control is just that—an illusion. And ultimately, it hurts the “cool girls” most of all.
Why? While the incarnations may vary, what all “cool girls” have in common is that they contort, conform, and camouflage themselves into the feminine ideal du jour at the expense of their own identities. It’s essentially Stepford Wives for the 21st century. We can increasingly tailor our phones, our TV shows, and even our religious beliefs to suit our cherry-picked preferences and desires— but why stop at consumer culture? Unlike cookie-cutter ideals of yore, the modern American “cool girl” is expected to cater to the desires of a generation who grew up personalizing their video game avatars down to the curves of their hips and the width of their waists.
Although feminism has undoubtedly made great strides since the days of the (white, middle class, Christian) housewife ideal, the “cool girl” in some ways represents a step back. While women of prior generations could explain their conformity in part by pointing to larger social controls such as religion, community expectations, and lack of access to alternative social roles, the primary motive for the cool girl’s camouflage is her own struggling psyche: she measures her self worth by her ability to please men.
The irony, of course, is that when people do fall for one another, it is rarely (if ever) because either partner checked off all the boxes of the other’s superficial ideal. Sure, couples typically find each other attractive, and may share common interests, but the core compatibility is not based on the extent to which one partner—typically the woman—has contorted and often compromised herself to meet the imagined expectations of the other.
This is not to say that young women can or do not enjoy baseball and beer of their own accord. It’s also true that people in relationships often develop an increased appreciation for their partners’ passions and preferences. It only becomes an issue when women start sacrificing their sense of agency. The downward spiral may start with a seemingly benign willingness to compromise her clothing style, progress to where she no longer speaks up when others treat her poorly, and ultimately reach a point where she believes, at a very core level, that she does not deserve respect and love if she dares to inconvenience, irritate, or God forbid, anger men— and thus fail to meet an ideal of womanhood that, by definition, does not exist.
Herein lies the cool girl’s destructive cycle: she seeks love through superficial validation, and when such “love” ultimately turns fickle (as is bound to happen when a relationship is based upon an imaginary ideal), she takes it as confirmatory evidence that she is somehow not good enough: if she only tried harder, if she only sacrificed herself more, she would not have lost his affections.
Yet the loss of this particular man is just a speed bump. With a shrug and a smile (because cool girls are always chill), she quickly recovers, drawing strength from her newfound “wisdom” of what not to do in the future if she wants to keep the next man interested. The “cool girl” ideal propels her forward, tantalizing and invigorating, always just out of reach.
But this insidious thought process is not only counterintuitive— it is incredibly dangerous. Every time the scorned “cool girl” attempts to rebuild her fractured psyche by further hollowing her shell of a self to make room for the idiosyncrasies of yet another male’s fantasy, she surrenders another bit of herself. It is truly a toxic cycle.
Some “cool girls” are so committed to the role that they will majorly risk their physical, emotional, and practical well being in pursuit of the ideal. And the most disturbing part is that they often don’t consciously realize how far they are spiraling.
But where do you draw the line? Here’s an example to put this in context: if you adopt the persona of a “party girl” and it gets you into trouble— legal, personal, academic or otherwise— at which point the guy in question often bails (no pun intended), you will likely be left wondering how you got yourself into such a hole and thinking, “Wait! This isn’t even me!” Please reach out to trusted adults for help if you find yourself in a challenging situation. It can literally save your life. Unfortunately, in some cases, the damage is irreparable.
But it doesn’t have to be this way. Change does not happen overnight, but perhaps we can start by simply flipping the script. Rather than acting upon the assumption that superficial validation is a prerequisite for receiving respect and love, we might instead seek validation in the love that already exists, that is stable and genuine: the love of our families, friends, passions, and yes, even ourselves. It sounds simple, but take it from a recovering “cool (read: compliant) girl”— it is the only way out.
The paradox is this: only when we renounce the “cool girl” can we actually be cool. Because the “cool girl” does not exist—but beautiful, strong, wise women do.