Cool Girl

The excerpt below is from the book. 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, [..] 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. 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 these 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 wants 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 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.”)” 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, even if you weren’t, then something was wrong with you. ― Gillian Flynn, Gone Girl

Word of the Year

I have never really been big on resolutions. And, not in a cynical bah-humbug kinda way..it's more of a write-down-my-resolutions-and-forget-about-it-around-the-tenth-of-january kinda thing. But this year, I wanted it to be a little different. And I saw a lot of 'word of the year' doing the rounds everywhere and by everywhere, I mean Pinterest, ofcourse! I thought it'd be a cool thing to think of one word and resolve to be or do just that the entire year. Kind of like having a theme for the year. How cool is that?! Lately, I have been feeling like I am perpetually preparing a mental list of "Things to Buy". You know, for me, for our home, for our neighbour..well, not really for our neighbour..I exaggerate! You get the drift right? Anyway, moving on..My list never got to the all-checked-off stage because I would keep adding things to it. It ranged from a $5 thing to more expensive ones. But, the list never got done. And then, it hit me that I am trying to find satisfaction in how good my house looked or how well truned-out I looked when I was out with my friends. I was letting these things decide my level of happiness and how I felt. So, over the past few days, I have been thinking about it and I want to focus on contentment. Just being content with what I we have and being grateful. I realized that I have been constantly pining for new things and pinterest doesn't really help either! I look around my home and I look at my closet. And I am happy with what I see. Ofcourse there is room for improvement but it really should not dictate the way I feel. This year is going to be all about being happy and content with what I have been blessed with. It's about utilizing whatever is in my closet to the fullest, cherishing our home the way it is, getting creative with things that is already available around me. There's always going to be that mismatched night stand which needs to be replaced, that new 'it' pants that has to be a 'must-have', those adorable throw pillows that'd look great in your living room, but I am not going to measure my joy with having the need to buy them immediately. Things can wait! NOT owning them is not going to stop me from hosting friends at our home or from going out and having a great time with my husband. Friends and the husband would rather have a joyful person than a 'stylish'one. And Tanvi's challenge could not have come at a better time. I have decided to be on a five month shopping ban! Let's see how it goes! It's totally normal if I have already made a mental list of things to buy with the money I'd have saved, right?! Right.