The Blog
  • Dating
  • Couple Goals
  • The Data
  • The Site
JOIN POF TODAY
The Blog
The Blog
  • Dating
  • Couple Goals
  • The Data
  • The Site
  • Advice

Why You Will Never Be The Cool Girl

  • June 3, 2014
  • 4 minute read
  • Shannon Smith
Total
0
Shares
0
0
0

Without digging a little deeper it can seem like she exists everywhere. In the media she might take form as Jennifer Lawrence, constantly proclaiming her love for food, and tripping up the stairs to the Oscar stage. She’s the startlingly perfect-looking nameless woman pouting her lips at you on your Instagram feed. In everyday life, she’s your coworker who never misses a taco lunch or Friday beer with the boys. She’s the Cool Girl. You’ve probably heard of her, known her or maybe even think you are her. Spoiler alert: you’re not, and neither is anyone else.

Gillian Flynn wrote an impeccable passage on the Cool Girl in last summer’s best-selling novel, Gone 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, 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, 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. For a long time Cool Girl offended me. I used to see men – friends, coworkers, strangers – giddy over these awful pretender women, and I’d want to sit these men down and calmly say: You are not dating a woman, you are dating a woman who has watched too many movies written by socially awkward men who’d like to believe that this kind of woman exists and might kiss them.”

It resonates somewhere deep down, doesn’t it? My first reaction to this scathing excerpt was a flash of recognition. As a longtime employee of an online dating site, I catch glimpses of her in countless profiles of women who tirelessly play up their Cool Girl game. She loves graphic novels and claims she’ll take an afternoon of dirt-biking over a romantic walk on the beach any day. She prattles on about having few female friends because she’s always “been a guy’s girl.” The point isn’t that yes, of course a woman in 2014 should be free to love contact sports, bourbon shots and visiting her local gun range, but doesn’t it sometimes seem a bit…gimmicky?

We all play roles. Your new boyfriend’s mother probably doesn’t care to hear about that time you tried naked bungee jumping last summer, because she wants to meet your ambassador, in a way. That same idealized version of yourself that your boyfriend probably thought he knew for a while, too. The act itself is exhausting, and can’t be maintained over the long-term. The same goes for the Cool Girl act.

Real relationships require boundaries and compromises and all of these nice things, but mostly it comes down to being OK with who you are. At some point you’re going to let it slip out that no, you don’t necessarily want to stay out late and drink too much every Friday, or watch the football game, or dutifully sit around while your boyfriend plays video games. We fear that disinterest in any number of things that fall inside the generic Cool Girl umbrella will equal boring. Nagging. Bitching. We’re afraid that being on the receiving end of a man’s eye-roll will confirm we’ve arrived at the place we tried so hard to avoid.

You find yourself nodding in agreement when someone you’re dating casually suggests you also continue to see other people, just to go on to scrutinize every word ever exchanged between the two of you. Where did you go wrong? Because isn’t the Cool Girl supposed to be agreeable and happy? Texts you receive from him are dissected in painstaking detail, and calculating a sufficient response can take all day. And suddenly, you realize you’re no longer the Cool Girl and you never really were. Your number one priority was to be received as sexy and mysterious – until one day this inevitably passes, because, life.

This is a realization that comes with time. So remember, while the Cool Girl can be fun to observe or scold or even attempt for a while, even the Cool Girls aren’t really Cool Girls deep down. They’re just girls, hoping someone might eventually accept them for how utterly uncool all of their dark and unexplored corners really are.

Total
0
Shares
Share 0
Tweet 0
Pin it 0
Shannon Smith

Shannon has been putting the ‘elation’ in the ‘Public Relations’ team at PlentyOfFish since joining the company in early 2010. Her penchant for jokes and all things hilarious can be topped only by her fierce love of writing. She also has a weird obsession with celebrities, and this one time she rode an elevator with Sofia Vergara.

Previous Article
  • Advice

3 Steps To Stop Him From Withdrawing

  • May 29, 2014
  • Rori Raye
View Post
Next Article
  • Advice

The 6 Types of Men You Meet Abroad

  • June 5, 2014
  • Erica Gordon
View Post

Subscribe

Tips to Your Inbox!

You May Also Like
View Post
  • Advice
  • Dating
  • Love Stories

Here’s how you can date safely online

  • January 10, 2023
  • Plenty of Fish Team
View Post
  • Advice
  • Dating

Get peace of mind with Garbo 

  • December 6, 2022
  • Plenty of Fish Team
View Post
  • Advice
  • Dating
  • Lifestyle
  • Trends

Should you be “Quiet Quitting” your dating life?

  • August 23, 2022
  • Plenty of Fish Team
View Post
  • Advice
  • Dating
  • Lifestyle

How to shake those first date jitters

  • August 19, 2022
  • Jackie Columbus
View Post
  • Advice
  • Dating
  • Lifestyle
  • Trends

Date spots in NYC that your date (and wallet) will love!

  • August 5, 2022
  • Jackie Columbus
View Post
  • Advice
  • Dating
  • Lifestyle
  • Research
  • Trends

Profile tips to make them click!

  • July 21, 2022
  • Jackie Columbus
View Post
  • Advice
  • Dating
  • Lifestyle
  • POF Life

A day in the life of a new POF user

  • June 30, 2022
  • Jackie Columbus
Woman tossing out the trash walking across grass
View Post
  • Advice
  • Dating

Declutter Your Dating Life: What to Keep and What to Toss

  • April 24, 2022
  • Megan Clark
1 comment
  1. dyarkhan says:
    June 26, 2014 at

    I want a girl

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Subscribe

Get Tips to Your Inbox

Privacy PolicyTerms of UseCookie Policy

Input your search keywords and press Enter.

✗

Header

pre

post

No Thanks