Bokelskere.no

Men actually think [the Cool 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 bad and say: The bitch doesn't really love chili dogs that much - no one loves chili dogs that much. (...) There are variations to the window dressing but believe me, he wants a 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, and if you weren't, then there was something wrong with you.

Tampon commercial, detergent commercial, maxipad commercial, Windex commercial. You'd think all women do is clean and bleed.

To me, it was heady enough to be in the Elliott's proximity, to skim across the Atlantic and return to a plushy restored home built in 1822 by a whaling captain, and there to eat meals of organic, healthful foods whose names I didn't know how to pronounce. Quinoa. I remember thinking quinoa was a kind of fish.