The Cool Girl

Hi Friends and Family,

On the car ride from Sarasota to Atlanta and back again, Sarah and I listened to the audio book, Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn. Aside from the crazy, f***ed up, manipulative plot line, there is a great excerpt from the wife’s perspective about men’s expectations of women. If you heard my song, You Stubborn Fool, you know that I have strong opinions on this subject.

Obviously I did not write this passage, but I want to talk about it on my blog because I think it’s something everyone (every male) needs to read. The passage is below:

“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. 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. I’d want to grab the poor guy by his lapels or messenger bag and say: The bitch doesn’t really love chili dogs that much – no one loves chili dogs that much! And the Cool Girls are even more pathetic: They’re not even pretending to be the woman they want to be, they’re pretending to be the woman a man wants them to be. Oh, and if you’re not a Cool Girl, I beg you not to believe that your man doesn’t want the Cool Girl. It may be a slightly different version – maybe he’s a vegetarian, so Cool Girl loves [tofu] and is great with dogs; or maybe he’s a hipster artist, so Cool Girl is a tattooed, bespectacled nerd who loves comics. There are variations to the window dressing, but believe me, he wants Cool Girl, who is basically the girl who likes every fucking thing he likes and doesn’t ever complain.” 

From Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn

Unfortunately, I know too many guys who have this mentality. They look for an ideal, perfect, cookie-cutter girl, but, news flash, you are not that cookie-cutter girl because no one is! When guys realize that you are not just an outline of a girl, but actually full of color, emotions, thoughts, opinions, and back-bone, they panic and retreat. When you ask him about the girl he texted at 1 a.m., or wonder why he is 20 minutes late to dinner, or expect him to call when he gets home, or get angry when he goes to a strip club with the guys, he says, “you’re acting too emotional”, “you’re over-reacting”, “you’re too needy”, “calm down”. And then he runs to the next girl who, for a short time, fills the role of Cool Girl, and when she inevitably lets the veil fall, the process starts all over again.

After talking with Sarah for over an hour about this passage, I came to some simple conclusions:

1. Never, ever pretend to be the Cool Girl. No one can maintain the facade of being someone they aren’t for a long period of time. If you start a relationship pretending to be the Cool Girl, eventually the mask will fall and your spouse/partner will see the real you, and they may not like what they see. If you are honest from the beginning and show your true self (emotions/faults/truths), and they don’t want you, they aren’t worth your time.

2. People will aways have disagreements, that’s inevitable. The key is that the things you disagree on are less important than the things you agree on.

In the end, respect yourself. Don’t sell yourself short and don’t be anyone but yourself.

**Obviously not every male thinks and feels this way, but a lot of guys I know do and it’s about time they hear this.