Cool girl. For most of my adult life, she’s who I thought I wanted to be. You may have heard of her. Hell, you might even be her. She’s the kind of person that everyone just wants to be around. She’s got an effortless kind of beauty, but isn’t vain. She knows how to hang with guys and girls. She’s quirky and different but also super relatable. And she always knows the right thing to say.
I, on the other hand, am not like that. I wear my heart on my sleeve and show my emotions often. I talk too loud. I’m clumsy and often a bit awkward. And, try as I might, I’ll always care about what people think of me.
For most of my teenage, and now adult life, I wanted to be this cool girl, without even really understanding who she was. I knew it when I saw it, but I couldn’t really put it into words. But in recent years the media has really reinforced this image on us. People like Jennifer Lawrence and Anna Kendrick, or characters like Black Widow or Robin Scherbatsky made me understand the ideal that I viewed the cool girl to be. And I’m not the only one who feels this way. Gillian Flynn essentially coined the term in her novel Gone Girl, and the movie adaptation includes a monologue that was able to express the feeling that I had had for so long. What I’ve come to realize is that the problem isn’t wanting to be this “cool girl,” but rather what she represents. Because at the end of the day, cool girl isn’t real! It’s just a label that society has created to tell us who we should try to be.
So much of this narrative is rooted in society trying to pit women against each other and, once again, make us feel inadequate. For so much of my life, I’ve found myself being jealous of the women that embody the cool girl image. How can I be like them? Why are they so good at it when I’m clearly failing? It’s the same thing we’ve heard a thousand times: “You’re not like other girls” or “There’s something about you that’s so different from other women.” It’s the things that men tell us to simultaneously make us feel special and remind us that the rest of our gender isn’t special.
Now, don’t get me wrong. Being cool is not an insult. I often find myself thinking “wow that girl is so cool,” and it’s a genuine compliment. The problem is when we build an idealized person or woman around that one word. Because no person is ever able to live up to that ideal. And, it not only creates competition between women, but it also creates an internal conflict. I often found myself questioning how authentic I was being when I was around other people. Is this me, or is it just me trying to be cool? Do they think I’m cool or does it just seem like I’m trying too hard? And I’m sure people like Jennifer Lawrence don’t like their entire personality being reduced to one trope when they offer much more than that. We need to recognize that a person is able to be cool without having to embody every facet of the mold, and more importantly a person doesn’t have to fit the mold at all in order to be cool.
Once I realized all of these things, it made it much easier to just be myself. That may sound a bit cliche, but it’s honestly true. I may ask a lot of questions, smile a lot, and generally be a little awkward; all of which are basically the antithesis of the cool girl. But guess what? I like being those things! Because those things also make me a really easy person to be around. Not to toot my own horn, but I have always prided myself on my ability to make people feel comfortable and welcome. It’s why I became an Orientation Leader and it’s why I love working with people. And these things might not mold me into the traditional cool girl, but they allow me to be my most authentic self. So rather than let society box us into tidy little stereotypes, let’s break the mold and redefine what a cool girl is, and everything she can be.