I was recently wowed by Gillian Flynn’s “Gone Girl” – particularly this paragraph:
“I was playing the girl who was in style, the girl a man like Nick wants: the Cool Girl. 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, 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. 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, shit on me, I don’t mind, I’m the Cool Girl. Men actually think this girl exists. Maybe they’re fooled because so many women are willing to pretend to be this girl.”
While this book is a whole lot darker than real life, Hollywood loves to perpetuate the myth of the “cool girl”. And girls buy into it. They buy into the pressure to pretend to like sports, non-girly cocktails, don’t give a shit if their men spend all their nights with the “boys” (read: stripclubs “wow! I wanna go next time too, I love strip clubs!”) and of course, love casual sex relationships.
**Insert obvious disclaimer here: Yes, some women actually like all this shit. Good for you.
The Cool Sports Chick
You know this girl. She’s never cared about a certain sport and all of a sudden, she can prattle off statistics, owns a jersey and can’t hang out tonight cos it’s “game night”. Or, the one who takes up a sport just to spend time with her man. Now, I’m not suggesting you don’t take an interest in things to spend more time with your partner, but how many men do you know take up manicures just spend more time with their women?
Movie Cool Girl: Cool Rachel McAdams in The Wedding Crashers (love this movie so much) is the ONLY girl playing touch football, while her much more sensible female family members choose to have cocktails. She’s SO FUN, she must be THE ONE!
The Cool Independent Girl
As Jay-Z said, “Get your independent ass outta here, question?”. The girl that can do everything for herself, by herself, “I don’t need a man to make me happy” girl. Calm down, sister wife! I advocate feminism (which is for the equality, not dominance of women in society) but there’s no need to assert it every 5 minutes. There’s nothing wrong with being the girl that appreciates a little doting attention every now and then.
Movie Cool Girl: Arctic-cool Mila Kunis represents the antithesis of the movie-titled character “Forgetting Sarah Marshall”, by being so cool it hurts – she guzzles beer, is good in bed, jumps off cliffs AND supports her man’s Dracula musical whole-heartedly. Jeez. Like us mortal beings could ever live up to that shit. (Sidenote: Any girl that says she’s “not that type of girl” is usually exactly THAT kind of girl.)
The Cool Girl Who Doesn’t Like Flowers
Ahhhh the declaration cool girls love to make to instantly give off the impression that they’re low-maintenance and not needy. Which honestly, is not in the job description of any woman. A smart man will call bullshit but there are those who will take their word for it and think “Great! Now I don’t have to do anything nice! Score!”
Movie Cool Girl: In what everyone mistakenly thought was a comedy, Jennifer Aniston in The Break-Up played the “take me out to the ball game”, hot-dog eating girl (no judgement on that, I love me some hot dogs) who suddenly loses it when she realises she’s not appreciated or valued.
The Cool Girl Who Doesn’t Want Gifts
Why would any girl actually volunteer to NOT receive gifts?! Who does that?! That’s the best part of being a girl! You get to have pretty things, take a longer time to get dressed and stay in bed one weekend a month!
Movie Cool Girl: In the first 5 minutes of Going The Distance, the constant games-playing is brought out by the new-ex-girlfriend who actually asserts that she didn’t want a gift and of course it bitterly upset when she didn’t actually get a gift.
The Cool Casual Sex Girl
This girl does not exist. Or at the very least, she’s 1% of all women and the chances of you sleeping with her are slim. Be wary of the girl who says she doesn’t want a commitment and be even more wary of the girl who says she just wants casual sex. You may feel like you hit the Holy Grail but the odds of her trying to turn it around on you is 99.9% and before you know it she’s spending the entire weekend at your apartment and wants to meet your mother.
Movie Cool Girl: Kristen Wiig makes every single mistake a girl can make to try to win over a guy – from enduring bad sex to faking commitment issues to accepting a world of disrespect. Which makes this movie so awesome, I love Bridesmaids so much.
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Moral of the story: Be your crazy ass self! It’s ok to want flowers and gifts and hate sports! Stop trying to be the Cool Girl that eventually buckles under the pressure of wanting to flip the switch. Just be honest from the get-go and get what you want before he gives you the heave-ho.
As always, my post disclaimer: "I know shit about shit".