What Cool Girls Are Wearing This Summer
“‘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, 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.”
Amy Dunne’s “Cool Girl” monologue from Gone Girl (2014) has undoubtedly cemented its place in the cultural zeitgeist, bringing the “cool girl” moniker along with it. “Cool girl” certainly has its own definition in pop culture more generally—a simple online search will tell you that a cool girl is confident; outgoing, yet mysterious; extremely desirable yet completely unattainable. And as Dunne’s speech suggests, her identity is rooted in misogynistic ideals; she’s a male fantasy that women pretend to be for male approval. But in the online fashion world, the cool girl is something else entirely.
In her most popular form, the fashion “cool girl” wears baggy low rise jeans and colorful Adidas sneakers. She carries a vintage bag that has been perfectly Jane Birkin-ified and is always stuffed to the brim with a combination of miscellaneous items that only makes sense to her. She has a red leather jacket to match her cherry red nails and is always carrying an iced latte. She is effortless, yet her look is perfectly curated. Her identity always seems to circle back to that last quality—unattainability.
But not for lack of trying. For the past few weeks, every time I’ve opened TikTok I’ve found myself bombarded with videos declaring that these are the shoes that the cool girl will be wearing this summer, that this is the cool girl color of this month, that these are the brands that every cool girl shops from. That cool girls will be flaunting “blueberry nails” and matching their “banana milk” socks with the perfect “mob wife” cheetah print mini skirt. Every video is aspirational in nature. Their underlying message is that if a girl can just buy the perfect pair of shoes and hunt down the perfect statement necklace, she will become worthy of the “cool girl” designation. And every video is completely missing the point.
The epitome of style in the modern day is trying extremely hard to look like you haven’t tried at all. What’s so alluring about the cool girl is that her effortlessness feels genuine. When images of Bella Hadid in her day-to-day streetwear circle the internet, it is entirely believable that the chic outfit she’s sporting was just casually thrown on before she left the house. Never mind whether it was actually put together by her or by her hired stylist. When we see Lily Rose Depp roaming the streets of Los Angeles in Chanel ballet flats, a cropped cardigan, and a leather trench, it doesn’t feel like she’s trying to manufacture the vibe that she’s putting out. Both of these models have their own individualized styles—it’s easy to differentiate an outfit that Hadid would be photographed in from one that Depp would be likely to wear—and yet they both hold the “cool girl” title, not necessarily because of their styles but because of the authenticity with which they seem to express themselves.
Courtesy of Pinterest
The same could be said for singer-songwriter Beabadoobee, whose style has a grungier edge but who is still viewed as the same kind of naturally cool “cool girl.” That authenticity, that effortlessness that leads us to believe these girls are so cool to begin with, is absent from every TikTok made about “what the cool girl is wearing this spring” and every article written about “the five staples in every cool girl’s closet.”
With that in mind, isn’t there an innate paradoxicality to the culture of the cool girl? The cool girl has a personal style. Her tastes are niche, but she’s nonchalant about it. She doesn’t care about what other people think of her, and she probably isn’t even aware of the way she occupies others’ minds as a “cool girl” because her focus is on curating her own interests and hobbies. So by trying so hard to become her, we inadvertently distance ourselves from the quintessential characteristics that make her so cool to begin with. By putting so much effort into mimicking the outfits and styles of the “cool girls” that the internet idolizes, we lose out on the opportunity to deepen our understanding of our own personal styles and identities.
In a sense, it’s the girls who care the least about being the cool girl that actually embody her persona the most. The girls who are secure in their sense of self, who know exactly what they like and don’t spend mental energy worrying about whether others like it too. And while that strong sense of personal identity might seem impossible to develop, the first step toward decentralizing others’ opinions in your personal style is understanding that “cool” is entirely subjective—you can define it however you like.
Essentially, cool girls are wearing whatever they want this spring. But more importantly, the “uncool” girls are too.
Featured Photo Courtesy of Pinterest