Going, going, gone

Why be a bootleg of the cool girl you admire when you can find things about them and use that to differentiate yourself from the pack?

MANILA, Philippines - It is 2014 and Gone Girl’s Amy Dunne’s “Cool Girl” monologue has secured its position as the longest quote ever posted word for word on social media by girls who have Tumblr accounts and have had at least one shitty boyfriend. To Amy, the “Cool Girl” is basically this: the hot girl who likes everything boys like and has no problem letting boys do exactly what they wanna do. The “Cool Girl” can keep up with and one-up the men whose approval they seek. The “Cool Girl” is always on, always game, and never loses her cool. How can she, when she is exceptionally impressive without batting a perfectly mascara-ed eyelash? And if she ever does, that would totally be uncool. No girl ever wants to be the Uncool Girl.

First off, I would like to implore all of you to not take Amy’s Cool Girl declaration to heart. She makes some good points, yes. There are some girls who edit themselves way too much to abide by an unrealistic male fantasy — a valid point to take into consideration. But then she is also a poorly adjusted Upper East Side psychopath whose preferred method of couples counseling is orchestrating her own murder and framing her husband. Taking her word with a grain of salt is a good idea.

The world we live in just puts too much weight on having to be the “Cool Girl.” Being a “Cool Girl” no longer just means getting all the desirable men to like you, it’s now also opening up a bunch of opportunities socially and financially. We now live in a world where you can get rich off people who want to purchase your specific brand of cool.

I find the concept of the “Cool Girl” to be extremely interesting. No other word in the English language balances the curious and the blasé more than the word “cool.” “Cool” is when you are effortlessly calm about being so impressive — so impressive it hurts but you are too unfazed to flinch. If there existed a Milo Sports Clinic to teach people how to be the cool girl, I’m pretty sure it would perpetuate the half-lie that to be the cool girl you really just have to be yourself. But like everything else, it comes more easily for some than it does for others. Very much easier said than done in a society where the pursuit of social acceptance is probably the strongest driver that leads girls to be the type of cool that is just not really true to who they are.

You see them around and you’ve probably thought to yourself, “Man, don’t you realize that you might just be trying too hard?” It can be anything. It’s the total Zara girl you knew in high school who’s started going out to hip-hop clubs or likes a boy who’s really into streetwear and now feels the need to put on a snapback while wearing those strap sandals that are so flat you can send them as a size guide to your tita in the States if you wanted new shoes as a pasalubong. Or it’s the previously boyish girl who started losing her sense of humor when she started developing her sense of style. Or it can be that girl who is really good at music and yearns to be part of a scene so she generates a different online persona by biting other people’s posts in the hope of breaking into it.

I’m not saying it’s wrong to start liking new things or to seek out new people who have been interested in these things — they’re the best people to learn from. I’m all for reinvention, but you must understand that reinvention doesn’t happen overnight. It takes time to weed through the things you discover to see what’s really true to what you like and how you are as a person. Everyone gets that tastes change, but if you were pop princess in the morning and witch house health Goth at night, it can be easily dismissed as fake and everyone knows that fake isn’t cool. You will be taking the you, the already pretty cool version of you, and replacing it with a farce. Just like how those closest to Amy Dunne knew she was full of shit.

So take your life pegs and learn things from them that won’t hide how you really are as a person. Why be the tiangge bootleg of the Name Brand Cool Girl you admire when you can find things about them and use that to differentiate yourself from the pack? Use it to build the cool girl you like and are effortlessly comfortable with, and you may just end up on the same shelf.