Today's Literary Wisdom

"That night at the Brooklyn party, I was playing the girl who was in style, the girl a man like Nick wants: the Cool 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 ...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...

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 those 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 want 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 F****** thing he likes and doesn't ever complain...

I waited patiently --years-- for the pendulum to swing the other way, for men to start reading Jane Austen, learn how to knit, pretend to love cosmos, organize scrapbook parties, and make out with each other while we leer. And then we'd say, Yeah, he's a Cool Guy.

But it never happened. Instead, women across the nation colluded in our degradation! Pretty soon Cool Girl became the standard girl. Men believed she existed --she wasn't just a dreamgirl one in a million. Every girl was supposed to be this girl, and if you weren't then there was something wrong with you.

But it's tempting to be Cool Girl. For someone like me, who likes to win, it's tempting to want to be the girl every guy wants... I didn't worry about anything that came next. Nothing had consequence, I was living in the moment, and I could feel myself getting shallower and dumber. But also happy.

...But then it had to stop, because it wasn't real, it wasn't me... It all started collapsing on itself.I hated Nick for being surprised when I became me... He truly seemed astonished when I asked him to listen to me. He couldn't believe I didn't love wax-stripping myself... That I did mind when he didn't show up for drinks with my friends... Again, I don't get it: if you let a man cancel plans or decline to do things for you, you loose. You don't get what you want. It's pretty clear."

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn (p. 222-225)

(Maybe this is the rant of a sociopath teetering over the line *spoiler alert* but the premise is that level of raw that can only be achieved by stark truth.)