“Cool girls” don’t ask what the cool girls are wearing or doing. They don’t type it into TikTok. They don’t sit through a 60-second aesthetic guide on “the new it girl hobbies” or “spots”, or the countless “the essentials every cool girl has in her winter wardrobe.” At least, that’s what I told myself, right before doing exactly that.
Hoping to find some direction for my increasingly confused self-identity, I opened TikTok and doomscrolled through “cool girl” propaganda as one does. I suppose I was looking for confirmation or evidence that if I could just get the right hobby or jumper, I might finally fit whatever archetype I’d spent years projecting onto other women. It wasn’t just outfits I was trying to copy; it was entire lifestyles. From journalling in a sunlit café and doing reformer Pilates at 6am, to reading a niche novel on the Overground and visiting impossibly curated “creative” spots on the weekends. I thought if I could collect enough of these traits, maybe I’d become her.
Growing up, fitting in felt like a survival skill. Even now, choosing something as simple as a plain jumper becomes a mental obstacle course: is this too basic? Too loud? Too try-hard? Too boring to be cool? Every piece of clothing carried a stereotype I’d invented myself. And when I started wearing the hijab, that pressure didn’t disappear — it intensified. I believed that my “hijabified” outfits automatically disqualified me from being the elusive, effortless “cool girl.” Wearing the hijab made me hyper-aware of how I presented myself: what people might assume, what people might project, and what I projected onto myself. Balancing identity, self-expression, modesty, and the expectations of strangers (or worse, my own imagined audience) became a constant negotiation. It didn’t matter that these expectations were mostly in my head; they still shaped everything I wore and everything I did.
That’s the thing about the “cool girl”: she’s less of a style category and more of a cultural fantasy. The general understanding is easy enough to recognise: a woman who is instantly identifiable in her hobbies, interests, aesthetic, and style — the type who radiates effortless taste. In any new space, she’s the first person I subconsciously search for. I’d scan the room for the girl who “has it all,” or at least looked like she did, even when she probably didn’t. She doesn’t just dress perfectly; she moves through life perfectly too. She works in aesthetically pleasing cafés, casually knows the best exhibitions, carries the “right” water bottle and the “right” tote bag, and speaks in soft, wellness-coded phrases. The lifestyle itself becomes an accessory.
But somewhere in my attempt to unlearn years of comparison, I started questioning the myth itself.
What even is a “cool girl”, and why was I so sure I could never be her? Would a “cool girl” spend hours doomscrolling for instructions on how to be cool? Would she buy clothes just because someone else told her to? Would she force herself into hobbies because they were trending rather than genuinely enjoyable? Would she let the algorithm dictate her taste, days, or worse, her personality?
The more I asked these questions, the more absurd the “cool girl” chase became. It’s almost paradoxical: how can a TikTok video titled ‘What the Cool Girls Are Wearing This Winter’ or ‘Three Cool Girl Hobbies You Need in Your 20s’ claim to guide individuality when the very idea of “coolness” relies on authenticity? Endlessly scrolling through everyone’s interpretation of “cool girl” fashion or “cool girl” routines doesn’t make you cool. It just makes you a fractured mosaic of other people’s preferences.
Online, the “cool girl” aesthetic flattens individuality into something marketable. Trends become personality and micro-aesthetics replace identity. The clothes that influencers recommend may not suit your lifestyle, your climate, your body type, your needs, or your existing wardrobe. Similarly, the hobbies they push might not suit your energy levels, your time, your values, or your reality. Yet they arrive packaged as the universal formula for desirability.
Most of what gets labelled “cool girl” is simply whatever’s trending or looks good on a conventionally attractive person with good lighting and a good camera. It’s not a culture —it’s a content category. And like any content category, it relies on sameness. These videos sound and look the same, push the same silhouettes, the same colour palettes, the same aspirational routines and activities, all worn and performed on the same bodies. It’s almost all repackaged as the essential uniform — quite the opposite of what is defined as the “cool girl” aesthetic. The algorithm manufactures a type of woman who doesn’t actually exist. It convinces us she does.
For me, that chase was especially complicated. Hijab-wearing women are rarely included in the mainstream “cool girl” narrative. On the rare occasion modest influencers are featured, they’re treated as an exception, not the norm — a niche category rather than part of the wider conversation about style, taste, or individuality. And the same goes for hobbies: the “cool girl” routine rarely accounts for cultural or religious contexts, different social environments, or the ways certain spaces may not feel accessible or comfortable for everyone. But wearing the hijab didn’t restrict my style, it forced me to interrogate it. And the same happened with hobbies. What did I actually like doing? What made me feel grounded? What felt comfortable, expressive, and personal rather than performative or aesthetic? With that shift came a realization: being a “cool girl” isn’t about fitting a template; it’s about refusing to need one.
The real “cool girl” isn’t searching endlessly for instructions, and she isn’t treating her wardrobe or her lifestyle like an algorithmic checklist. She’s dressing for her actual life, choosing hobbies that genuinely fulfil her, living at a pace and in a way that makes sense for her real body, her real community, her real self — not for an imagined version of herself who lives in a curated digital world.
Maybe that’s the quiet irony: the moment you stop trying to be the “cool girl” is the moment you become her. Not the one the algorithm designs, but the one you define for yourself. Because in the end, a “cool girl” doesn’t follow the algorithm; she just doesn’t need one.