What It Means To Be The ‘Cool Girl’ Because It’s More Than Maintaining A Size 2

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“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, loves threesomes and anal sex, 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.” Gone Girl, Gillian Flynn

Being the cool girl means you embrace one-night stands and almost relationships, even when the only thing you want is a serious relationship. It means you change your desires to fit whatever your man wants at the time. Impressing him becomes the most important thing in the world because his view of you matters more than the real you. His happiness matters more than your comfort.

Being the cool girl means you spend hours on your appearance — tweezing and contouring and blending — but you act like it only took you two seconds to get ready. You act like you naturally look like you just stepped off the cover of a magazine, because if you admitted it took work to look that way, men would call you high maintenance. But if you stopped putting in the work, they would call you lazy.

Being the cool girl means you don’t mind if your boyfriend is dancing with other girls at the club or flirting with them within your eyeline or commenting on their figure directly to you. In fact, you’re probably doing the same thing. You are pointing out how hot all of the other girls around you are, because you don’t mind your man ogling them. You welcome it.

Being the cool girl means you never get angry, even when you have every right to scream your lungs out or give the silent treatment. It means you let yourself get walked over, because you don’t have a backbone. Because adding confrontation to the relationship risks ending the relationship, and you would rather carry on pretending to be happy than slip your heart onto your sleeve and act authentic.

Being the cool girl means that you never speak your mind, because all of your opinions match your man’s opinions. You like all of the same things he likes. You want to do all of the things he wants to do. You would never suggest watching a rom-com or cuddling, because you’re only allowed to be a certain amount of girly. Girly enough to look good, but not girl enough that it becomes annoying.

Being the cool girl means that you are only half yourself at any given time. It means you are pretending to be the imaginary woman that men like to pretend exist. The kind of woman that men stay single to find, because they aren’t interested in settling down in a real relationship with real problems. Because they would rather hold out for a cool girl who gives them the freedom to fuck around than be with someone who calls them out on their bullshit and actually expects them to put in an equal amount of effort.

Being the cool girl fucks you over, because you never get a chance to be yourself. You’re constantly putting on an act. But it’s not your fault that cool girls exist. They exist because of the bullshit expectations placed on us. They exist because sometimes it feels like tossing our emotions to the side and acting chill is the only way to keep a guy’s attention.