by Lucy Korn

The Cool Girl, Manic Pixie Dream Girl’s older sister.

Meet The Cool Girl (TCG for short) she’s a conventionally attractive, laid back, slim, 20 something woman who enjoys sports, drinking beer, eating hotdogs and kicking yo ass at video games. She can burp on demand and can have casual sex without it having to mean anything.

She has the combined personalities of Mila Kunis in Friends With Benefits, Olivia Wilde in Drinking Buddies, Cameron Diaz in There’s Something About Mary, Sandra Bullock in Miss Congeniality, Anne Hathaway in Love and Other Drugs, Kate Hudson in How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days (except when she’s buying him a love fern and naming his penis Princess Sophia) and Jennifer Lawrence, if you take away her ability to be pissed off. That’s TCG’s defining trait actually. She never, ever, ever gets pissy. She’s chill, man. She’s COOL.

Sounds great right? Too bad the TGC only exists on screen, or in your dreams. She’s a myth, a shtick. If you think you’ve met one (a real one) you’ve been played and if you think you are one you’re playing yourself which is even worse.

Consider this passage from book (and movie) of the moment, Gillian Flynn’s 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, 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, co-workers, 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 seitan 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.” ― Gillian Flynn, Gone Girl

 

Sound familiar? Thought so.