BABYGIRL!

Nowadays, when you walk down the street or see the girl next to you in class, there is a strange sense of deja vu. You each have the same water bottle branded ‘Owala’ in either all pink or all white, both wearing a brand new pair of black and white Adidas Sambas while having a Summer Fridays Lip Balm hidden in the depths of your Lululemon or Northface backpack. We buy the uniform, we learn the aesthetic, and we participate in the trends. Yet, the paradox of the Cool Girl is glaring: all these micro-trends and expensive purchases that are meant to make you look uniquely “cool” just end up making you look exactly the same as every other girl in the room. We are all falling for the perception of being the perfectly curated “Cool Girl.”

The modern ‘Cool Girl’ is built on gaslighting, requiring you to look a certain way. You are expected to have flawless skin, but without looking like you are wearing any makeup. You are expected to look hydrated but only using a specific $40 cup. You are expected to create a 15-second TikTok video portraying your perfect life, but while remaining humble and giving off that you rarely touch Social Media.

Performing to please other people is exhausting when we are buying objects to signal our status. We sacrifice our comfort zones, our bank accounts, and our authentic tastes just to fit into a mold that changes every six months anyway. Last year it was Stanley cups and Ugg Tasman slippers, and today it’s Owalas and Sambas. I promise you that next year will be something entirely different.

When we look at the amount of energy spent on creating this facade, it raises a question: What is wrong with just being cool with yourself?

The algorithm wants us to be clones because clones are easy to sell things to. Every time we blindly follow a micro-trend, we hand over a little bit of our individuality to a corporate marketing team. It’s time to free ourselves from the exhausting, expensive, and entirely unoriginal pursuit of the effortless Cool Girl. Let the matcha go to waste if you hate it. Wear the old sneakers. The most rebellious, badass thing you can do in a world full of copycats is to finally just be yourself.