I’m a Cool Girl and Your Sexist Bros Love Me
I’m an accomplice to benevolent sexism.
It had been a month since I found myself single again after a few years. It was a month of rumination, reflection, and a few tear-soaked pillowcases.
In maintaining the habit that I have with every breakup, I compiled a mental pros and cons list of the experience to answer the quite pointless question — was it worth it?
I considered what I would be missing now that this guy was out of my life. I had a few things I knew I’d miss (hence the tears), but even more things I knew I wouldn’t.
We were different in ways that were starting to sour. What once made us a zany pair had turned grating and distancing. I wanted a dog, he thought I was messy. I valued self-discovery and human connectedness, he valued skiing and superhero movies.
Our inevitable breakup brought relief and an easily-assembled compilation of positives. No more bickering over how best to load a dishwasher, no more alienation over too many separate vacations, no more pretending to like his music tastes.
But there was a surprising headliner on the list of break-up perks.
I would never again have to hang out with a cringeworthy relic of benevolent sexism.
My boyfriend’s best friend: Misogyny Man (hereafter, MM).
More specifically, I would never have to hang out with the Cool Girl in me who showed up each time MM did.
The Cool Girl. She laughs at crude jokes and tacks on a quip to add to the laughter. It doesn’t outwardly faze her when the men around her make comments on a woman’s breasts or, even worse, call them tits.
Sometimes, it’s the Cool Girl who points them out. She sensually chows down on greasy diner food and orders pitchers for the table. She is a bro, but still works to keep it sexy.
I had read articles and blog posts about this tired trope, but it never resonated with me. After all, I liked Bikini Kill (’90s punk rock band) and spited the patriarchy.
A highlight of my college years is meeting Gloria Steinem. I love a good women’s rights rally. I donate to Planned Parenthood and the YWCA and dutifully follow both on social media.
I strive to see the world within the framework of intersectional feminism and wax philosophical with friends about the same.
So how did the Cool Girl elbow her way in?
I can pinpoint when she made her debut, it was the same day my then-boyfriend introduced me to MM at a brewery they frequented. I wanted to impress him.
I knew he’d socialized with a couple of my new man’s past contenders for a life partner, and I wanted him to see me as the winner.
He was single, a Boomer — though fancied himself 20 years younger — and seemed quite proud of his bawdy sense of humor, laughing at his own tasteless jokes.
Despite his character being that of a wild-eyed philandering 90s shock jock, I wanted his endorsement.
So I was careful not to be too snarky, avoided raising any controversial subjects, and praised his beer selection as if I knew what made a good IPA.
Within an hour of our first meeting, when he turned the conversation toward politics, MM casually declared that New York congressional representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez belonged in a Playboy bunny costume more than she did the halls of Congress.
My boyfriend, seemingly quite enamored with his more senior and accomplished friend, gave a head nod.
And me?
I casually ignored his comments, assuming he was trying to test me. Instead of calling him out on this sexism, I simply tittered and elongated my neck, trying to show him my own Playmate of the Year pose.
Those social visits became a regular entry on our couple’s calendar.
At least once a week, a group of the able and willing members of the friend group would gather at the brewery for a pint or two while MM held court and the Cool Girl made an appearance.
Of course, any part of my boyfriend who would have challenged the noxious gibberish never showed up. Did I mention this breakup was inevitable?
In my younger years, I chased down and called out sexism like I was a bounty hunter tracking and tagging bail jumpers.
Now, I was engaging in a vapid conversation in between his racist and sexist jokes. Now, I was casually serving some side eye while MM told me what Halloween costume my body would look best in.
“You’d rock a sexy cop outfit.” And here I thought I was more of a Playmate gal.
Instead of walking off and finding a better table mate, I ate my fries and sucked in my stomach while he pronounced that girls with buck teeth are good in bed.
“I’ll take your word for it,” I said, ignoring the impulse to tell him he was a creep and needed to read a book.
MM was one of those dudes who never developed the self-awareness necessary to balance out cockiness and think critically about stereotypes.
He was one of those dudes who was never brave enough to socialize with people who challenged his social standing.
As for me, I had become one of those women, the ones who take their feminism for granted, assuming it will exist without giving it a voice.
I had become a woman not brave enough to challenge the benevolent sexism that fertilizes everything from street harassment to the wage gap.
So I let him ramble on, assuming he knew that I had a standing objection to derogatory drivel and trusting that my aloofness would prove I wasn’t one of those annoying, overly sensitive girls.
You know, I was cool.
And with that, Cool Girl took her cue, showing up like a raging infection tearing through any mere suggestions that MM’s misogyny was less than okay.
She laughed and bantered and smirked while feeding the cultural view of women that does nothing but harm us. Silence is violence and there I was, quiet as a mouse carrying the Cool Girl plague.
I didn’t have what it took to chase the Cool Girl off in those moments.
She eclipsed the part of me that would have taken the oxygen out of the room with a cutting rebuttal that served as both punishment and warning.
Even worse, she stayed with the boyfriend who was both clueless and contributed to the toxicity. But then my connection to MM ended, the stink of it all started to clear, and I came back to myself.
I confess
My great confession is that it is wrong for me to talk about the Cool Girl in the third person.
Now, with the clarity that often comes with separation, I hold myself accountable for displaying this inauthentic part of myself. I was overcome with wanting to be accepted and prized, a fairly basic set of human desires.
To me, I wrongly assumed my feminism could live peacefully (and quietly) with my effort to be crowned winner.
I toss the Cool Girl imposter into the wasteland of troublesome identities. No more validating benevolent sexism, or racism, and ableism with a head-tossing laugh.
No more chiming in to gain acceptance from an undeserving archaic yahoo. I can never take my feminism for granted and assume that it can live on without a voice.
I cannot let my feminist values be diluted by fear that I will be seen as too reactionary or be considered less than worthy.
Instead, I will double dare myself to talk back and speak up, even if it means I find myself chowing down on delicious greasy diner food at a table for one.
