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When Gillian Flynn published Gone Girl in 2012, she gave us a name for a certain type of girl. She gave us a label for a well-known faux personality, a put-on-for-show vibe that perfectly describes the image so many girls strive to achieve. The easy, laid-back, always down, pizza eating, sports watching, joke making, three-some loving, naturally beautiful persona that was considered the ideal mate. She gave us a name for what we all knew existed:
The Cool Girl.
“The Cool Girl” phenomenon, as you may well know, is the facade some girls perpetuate in order to be liked, specifically by men. In 2012, when I first read Gone Girl and was introduced to Amy Elliott Dunne, a self-proclaimed cool girl, I felt both deeply understood and embarrassed. See, I was the Cool Girl. In 2012 I was a senior in high school (the height of my pursuit of the Cool Girl persona) and I was utterly exhausted by the entire thing. Laid back and down for whatever, I often neglected how I felt so as to not cause a scene. I worked out but said I didn’t, strategically did my makeup to look like I wasn’t wearing makeup, and did all the other “I’m a guy’s girl” cliches that only serve to isolate a girl rather than make her unique. You know the type. Amy Elliot Dunne describes the Cool Girl far more eloquently than I ever could in this excerpt from the novel:
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.
Now, I’m going to state the obvious here: the Cool Girl persona is toxic and isn’t real. It is a front that you either eventually outgrow or (spoiler alert) drives you so insane you fake your own kidnapping and murder someone and frame your husband but then go back to him and fuck him up psychologically for the rest of his life but it’s fine cause he deserves it (I think? It’s been a while since I saw the movie).
Seventeen-year-old me liked the idea of the Cool Girl because it was a neat little box I could put myself in. It was a persona I could copy, a personality I could mold, and it made me well-liked, maybe even revered to some extent. Everyone wanted to be the Cool Girl because she was so, well, cool. That is, until we created something better than the Cool Girl. Enter: Girl Boss.
It is important to note that Girl Boss is rooted in a far more evolved, well-intentioned base than that of Cool Girl. On that we can certainly agree. Where Cool Girl acquiesces to a man’s wishes, Girl Boss masterfully balances work, family, and romance. Where the Cool Girl is thin, Girl Boss is fit. Cool Girl is easy going, Girl Boss is outspoken. Girl Boss is empowered women who support each other, lean in, and set goals. She can do her taxes, change her oil, and make her own money. It seems, actually, that Girl Boss is the collective reaction to and rejection of the Cool Girl. As if finally we had enough of pretending to be something we’re not. But here’s the thing- the pressure I felt in high school to be Cool Girl is starting to look and feel a lot like the pressure I feel today to be Girl Boss. That begs the question:
Is Girl Boss really any better?
Just as I was tired of the laid-back, always chill vibes I had to keep up to be a Cool Girl, I am equally as tired of the Rise and Grind rhetoric, the #BeYourOwnBoss Instagram campaigns, and in general the ‘everyone should be an entrepreneur’ mindset that has since become the preferred persona to which women may aspire to.
Not every girl can be a boss, at least not immediately or without training and practice, and I find it to be an exhausting, even harmful proposition that to be a Girl Boss is to be a 20-something CEO or bust. What about apprenticing, or saving money to start said business, or, I don’t know, taking time to figure it all out? What about the girls that, god forbid, don’t want to start a business. Are they exempt from being a Girl Boss?
Just because the internet has facilitated an easier ability to start something, albeit a podcast, online store, GoFundMe, or a small business, it doesn’t always mean we should. Ideas take time. They take incubating, and hindsight, and years of understanding the market or honing your craft. I dare say just because you have a podcast doesn’t mean you have anything to say.
The problem isn’t that the Girl Boss image says to girls that anyone can start a business. The problem is that it says to girls that everyone should start a business, and that it is easy to do so. It’s another expectation, another unrealistic standard, and it is exhausting.
I’ll give you a very candid example. I started writing for Post Grad Problems two months ago. I really like it, and I am excited every day when I sit down to write a column. I haven’t told many people at all that I write, but the few that I did tell all have the same response.
“Why don’t you start your own site?”
I kid you not. My father, 2 female friends, 1 male friend, and my Aunt have all asked why I don’t just start my own website about the trials and tribulations of 20-something young professional life. “It’s so easy!” they’ll say, “Why work for someone when you could start your own thing!”
While it is kind for them to say, time and time again I assure them I will not be starting my own website. I am so happy writing for Grandex, and being a freelance writer is fantastic. They have an established brand, one they have cultivated tenderly for years. They have experienced professionals and editors and I still have a lot to learn about writing. But the expectation these days, is not that I should learn from the company I work for, but that I should be a true Girl Boss and march on over to GoDaddy, buy myself www.CallMeVictoria.com and start a god damn business.
Ha!
The expectation to be a successful entrepreneur at 23 aside, the Girl Boss image is a glossy, sexy lie that makes keeping an extraordinary amount of balls in the air seem as easy as 1-2-3. It sells an image that life as a Girl Boss is effortless and beautiful and that the “Grind” is really a glorious existence of well curated power suits and buzz words like value-add and self-starter.
The grind, in reality, is a suit that hasn’t been dry cleaned in 6 months, 10 extra pounds because the gym has taken a back seat to sleep, 10 cups of medium warm coffee per day, and a LOT of spreadsheets.
Girl Boss, while it is rooted in infinitely better expectations of women, is still to some extent an unattainable personality in an unrealistic reality that, if not achieved, connotes failure. If the Cool Girl, in all her glory, was nothing more than a personality made up of chill things and suppressed emotions, the Girl Boss is a compilation of hash tags, Rise and Grind slogans, and filtered photos of #MotivationMonday workout classes and lattes. I’ve just had enough with all of it.
I guess that is simply 1,500 words all to say this: on Sunday I ate a pint of ice-cream for breakfast, I just dropped out of an online class because I failed the first homework assignment, my room is a literal disaster zone, and I haven’t had lemon water in 2 years, unless it was in one of 5 vodka sodas I drank on Sunday night. Oh, and I really don’t think I’m qualified to start a business just yet.
I’m not a Cool Girl or a Girl Boss and I won’t pretend to be anything other than a girl just trying to figure it out. Unless, of course, there’s a Mess Girl stereotype, then there’s absolutely no pretending necessary..
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CallMeVictoria
Life is messy, let's get dirty. itwasvictoria@gmail.com
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CMV claims to be a “mess”, the fact that you released two quality columns in a day determined that was a lie
Much like the Cool Girl, if a girl calls herself a #GirlBoss, she’s probably far from it in reality.
So cool girl is a sociopath. Good goals.
Which part of the description are you qualifying as sociopathic?
How bout the part where the chick from Gone Girl is the cool girl? You know, the one where she runs an elaborate scheme to frame her husband for murder and then comes back to trick him into getting knocked up. I dunno though, guess that’s a maybe.
Selling overpriced, disgusting shakes via Facebook and posting about them 15+ times a day doesn’t make you a boss or a small business owner.
I apologize if this isn’t the place or it’s deemed to be comparative in any way, since it’s not and I agree 100% with your premise…
This actually brings up an interesting conversation I had in one of my media classes. We showed this Korean Airlines commercial where this businessman traipsed around the world, with attractive women waiting for him at every stop, and attractive Korean Airlines flight attendants in between.
We spent nearly 30 minutes talking about the negative repercussions of showing women in this light, before anyone even thought about the guy.
Much like the Girl Boss, Commercial Guy was expected to be wildly attractive, speak 8 languages (well enough that women were evidently fawning over him the world round), have a job that allowed him to travel the world in first class, and then have the money and energy to travel the world the rest of the time.
This was all in a 30 second commercial and not a single person blinked at him holding this role.
That is the intrinsic comparison that I think a lot of guys feel in a similar way to what you’ve described with Cool Girl and Girl Boss. We’re expected to be emotionally advanced members of the 21st century, supportive of women, while still maintaining the Commercial Guy “manliness” of past generations.
Nah, us guys have it easy. My wife and her friends are all moderately successful women, and to be a stand-out husband in the crowd of their spouses and boyfriends, all I have to do is have a job that covers a decent hunk of the bills, not scream at her, do the dishes occasionally, and be around more often than not on the weekends. It’s a low bar, man.
That low bar is a more serious societal, political, and moral problem than anyone likes to talk about.
Agreed, the bar is indeed lower for guys. (And my current situation is exactly the same as yours.) That said, the fascination with startup culture paints an unrealistic view of #goals for both men and women.
that’s like when Chrissy Teigen posted a video of John Legend helping her take off her jewelry and everyone posted that it was “#goals” she (rightfully) ripped then all apart and said their goal guy needed to be more than a decent human being that would help take off your necklace.
These identities just cause such an unhealthy framework that us as people work within
For all its macabre-ness, Fight Club still makes an excellent point about the absurd standards for folks of all types set by advertising. I believe the influence of advertising and social media also bleed into the stereotypes that CMV is writing about.
That and it’s a sweet ass movie.
If I see one more girl involved in some MLM use #GirlBoss, I will smack her upside the head with her own bottle of Shakeology, fitness wrap, or ugly leggings. You’re not your own boss, your schlepping some overpriced product that if it lived up to the hype, would be sold in stores.
This. Especially after watching the Herbalife documentary on Netflix (yes I believe everything I read and see) it’s easy to see how fucked these people really are. It’s not rocket science how those schemes work, and it very rarely works out in the long run for anyone. But then it’s onto the next one!
Have you ever noticed that everyone selling ItWorks is fat?
I generally agree with everything you’ve written, but I think the difference between the two has to do with more than female stereotype. I have a lot of the same feelings about “being a boss” except I’m not a girl. Most of my peers are relatively successful, some very successful, and some are just really good at appearing like they’re successful. They jump at every opportunity to pat themselves on the back and brag about how successful their dipshit pyramid scheme is.
And it’s only getting worse for everybody, the toxic mentality that you can’t be successful unless everybody knows about it is rampant. In my opinion, playing the long game to success is just as “Boss” as some nonsense app about your “personal brand”.
Agreed. Playing the long game to success is even more “Boss” as their nonsense app about their “personal brand” in many cases.
I’m playing the long game in my career right now and it fucking sucks for the first couple years but after that it’s great. And *shocker* it’s not a pyramid scheme or some cheap bullshit job.
Also, the CallMeVictoria website is already taken.
I’ll give you $750 for it
Unfortunately, it’s not mine, but I think I should start buying up the domains for the other PGP pseudonyms.
Sounds like I’m starting my own business! Yes!
Just make sure to #BeYourOwnBoss
Everyone, we’re all economic slaves used for relatively cheap labor. These #Boss people are delusional psychos with inflated egos that should be avoided at all times
So when does the #DoYou (beta name) campaign start? The one that doesn’t say ‘Do it just like this’ but rather ‘Do it your way so that fail or succeed you at least did it your way’. Hint, it’s never because they can’t sell advice books or get repeated website hits with that.
The happiest people I know all did it their own way. Some started a business and poured in 80hr work weeks for decades, some worked as an employee for 40hrs/week and left work in the office, and others worked a full time job then had a hobby outside of work that made some money. None of them were right, they were just right for them.