Like most 20-year-old girlwomen, I cannot wait until I borrow my friend’s copy of Cosmo every month. I refuse to buy it, but I love reading it- it’s my biggest guilty pleasure. Aside from Teen Mom.
I was reading this month’s issue (the one with Adele on the cover)
and there were two articles that really stuck out to me. The first was titled “Seduction Secrets French Women Know.” The jist of the article was that women keep an air of mystery. They don’t “pee with the door open” or “complain about PMS.” According to the article, French women “believe that keeping some things under wraps adds an element of enticement to interactions with a guy.” Okay, that’s cool. I can dig that. Who doesn’t love a little mystery in their life?
Well, then I kept reading and I found another article. “5 Reasons Raunchy Girls are Winning.” Excuse me? I thought that we had to be mysterious? I thought we were supposed to not make fart jokes or burp at the table? This article, instead, encouraged women to make “foul jokes or rude gestures” to show that we can “hold [our] own with guy friends” and encouraged women to never apologize for going after men with “balls-to-the-wall” determination. Cosmo, you’re sending me more mixed messages than my ex-boyfriend.
After reading both of the articles I found myself trapped with one question running through my mind:
Am I a French Girl? Or am I a Raunchy Girl?
It seemed to me that Cosmopolitan was telling me I had to pick one, because quite honestly it seems impossible to be both. So I sat over my coffee and Cosmo and pondered. What am I? Who am I? And why is Cosmo fueling my ongoing existential crisis?
The truth is, I like to think I have a sort of mysterious air about me- and I think all women do. It’s enticing and endearing to be a bit mysterious and keep men guessing. But I’m also known to make off color jokes about suicide. So where does that leave me? Where does that leave all women? And why are we being forced to choose between being a French Girl and being a Raunchy Girl?
I’m probably reading too far into the whole thing, like I do with most things in my life, but I don’t understand what Cosmo is trying to tell me. And what am I going to do if I don’t understand advice from every girl’s go-to source?
Make it up as I go along. Maybe I’ll die alone. But at least I’ll die laughing my ass off because I chose to be a Raunchy French Girl.
This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at Oswego chapter.