Is the "Cool Girl" Obsolete?

“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.” (Gillian Flynn, Gone Girl).

Every holiday season, like clockwork, the gift guides come in hot. But a simple gift guide is not enough, not in a sea of them. You need to sell it. The recent marketing tactic is the “Cool Girl Gift Guide.” In these gift guides, you can find a slew of objects ranging from a sultry designer perfume to a hand-crafted mug from your local ceramicist, and just about everything in between. The Cool Girl seems to have a floating, dynamic definition. She embodies, well, coolness. Effortless but not so effortless that she doesn’t care, intentional but not calculated — to be a Cool Girl you have to strike the perfect tone.

I love these gift guides. They are thoughtfully crafted and a great tool for inspiration during the holiday season, but I get caught up on the “Cool Girl” label. I wanted so badly to be revered as a Cool Girl in middle and high school. Once I was a Cool Girl, I would be treated as a Cool Girl. All would be right in my world.

I never achieved Cool Girl status, at least not from the viewpoint of the boys I thought so highly of (at least not to my knowledge). At this point in my life, I can confidently say I think I’m cool, according to my definition of cool. But I just broke one of the key rules of being a Cool Girl…

You can never call yourself a Cool Girl, at least not without a hint of irony. To get called a Cool Girl is the defining compliment, it’s what we Non-Cool Girls are all silently striving towards. We all want to appeal to the Cool Man in our lives. But does the Cool Man even exist?

Cool Men don’t have a monologue, they don’t need one. They can be any version of cool they want to be. But what does Cool Girl even mean? Is it full-on Amy Dunne (à la Gone Girl), is it dressing like the current Hollywood It Girl(s) (a subgenre of Cool Girl), is it having a persona so unique, so untouchable, that everyone on the street strives to be you? Is it above all, a never-ending race where energy gels are new and trendy items you must buy and the finish line keeps elusively moving further and further away from you?

I have seen a lot of Cool Girl gift guides this season, more than I can count. Cool Man gift guides? Maybe four, if I’m feeling generous. Oh, and notice how it’s the Cool Girl, but for the men in our lives, it’s the Cool Man? Cool Boy? No, that doesn’t quite work. Too young. Cool Woman? Now that’s just too old, way too old.

For me it’s the standards. The invisible, impossible to pin down standard of what it means to be a Cool Girl, the sexist double standard of what language we use to identify “cool” people, the standard to buy, buy buy, this product will make you cool. These standards infiltrate and skew what should be a personal, subjective, and intimate judgment.

This year, I got my mom a fish citrus squeezer. Perfectly weird, kitschy, and functional, all the markings of a perfect gift (at least in my book). I found this item through an internet gift guide, one of the many that I have viewed, which explains why I can’t think of the gift guide I found it from. There’s a good chance this gift guide had “Cool Girl” in the title, but there’s a chance it didn’t. I got my older sister a bright red Baggu, and my younger sister a striped scarf. I got my girlfriend a ceramics class for the two of us. I am still searching for my Nana’s gift, and my family spent the day remembering my Grammy in all her wonderfulness, which was really a gift to us. I did not buy these gifts so they could attain the Cool Girl status or so they could fit a certain aesthetic. Pigeonholing people into a certain “aesthetic” limits our collective ability to appreciate one another’s unique individuality. Whatever the case, my mom is not a Cool Girl. She’s my Mom. And my sisters are not Cool Girls, they’re my sisters. And my grandmas are not Cool Girls, they’re my Nana and Grammy. And my girlfriend is not a Cool Girl, she’s my girlfriend. And they’re the coolest women in my book because they’re exactly who they are.

P.S.

I think they’re all incredibly cool. The absolute coolest.