[ SECRET POST #2939 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2939 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 036 secrets from Secret Submission Post #420.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

My issue with that Cool Girl thing is that it's supposed to be about pretending to be someone you're not to please men, but the list of things mentioned is pretty much only traditionally masculine things, except for trying not to be confrontational. That turns the discussion into "women are pretending to act like dudes to please men. If they were true to themselves, they'd act like women." So instead of being a quote that supports women being who they want to be, it becomes a defense of gender essentialism.

Why didn't the author include other kinds of things men supposedly like in women? And this is anecdotal, but still: most of the things I've seen female friends fake to please guys were traditionally feminine things, not the things on that list.

[(Anonymous)]

I was more worried about the threesomes and anal part.

[(Anonymous)]

Why didn't the author include other kinds of things men supposedly like in women?

Because Amy is supposed to be an irrational jerkass and the quote wasn't really intended to support women being who they want to be because...well, Amy is a jerkass

[(Anonymous)]

Fair point. But then why all the discussions about the quote either take the essentialist route or praise the critique of a fake non-confrontational attitude without addressing this problem with the quote?

[(Anonymous)]

Because if you read the entire quote, it points out that football is exchangeable with whatever a given man happens to want.

"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. (How do you know you’re not Cool Girl? Because he says things like: “I like strong women.” If he says that to you, he will at some point fuck someone else. Because “I like strong women” is code for “I hate strong women.”

You have confused the specific Cool Girl Amy needs to be for Nick with the overall concept.

[(Anonymous)]

No, I didn't confuse it. I'm saying that because those are the only kinds of things listed (even in the variations, aside from the food and dog bits), the discussion about it became essentialistic, about women faking to be dudes. The articles about it, praising it, usually only list women who "tried to act like one of the guys" as the example of Cool Girl. They don't give any other examples, like pretending to be modest and shy, they don't treat it as any pretense to please a guy makes you a Cool Girl. But then comes someone like you saying it's about all pretenses. So it becomes a conversation about two completely different things at the same time.

There are a couple pieces that focus on pretending and being non-confrontational, but those don't point out examples or discuss the limited scope of the examples in the quote or their warped interpretation.

[(Anonymous)]

But those aren't the only kinds of things listed. You stopped reading before the list included a wider variety of things. You stopped reading before the summary, which isn't about things but about patterns of behavior.

You want it to be gender essentialist so you can complain about it.

[(Anonymous)]

No, I'm trying to understand it, not complain about it. It's not my fault every single discussion about it only quotes and discusses that part - in fact, that's exactly the issue I'm pointing out.

Thank you for letting me know the description in the book is a lot better than what people portray it as. That's something I wanted to know. I guess most pieces about Cool Girl were written by people who didn't read the book, then. Good to know.