{"id":261,"date":"2014-10-01T22:45:00","date_gmt":"2014-10-02T04:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2014\/10\/the-cool-girl-speech.html"},"modified":"2015-02-26T23:19:33","modified_gmt":"2015-02-27T05:19:33","slug":"the-cool-girl-speech","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2014\/10\/the-cool-girl-speech.html","title":{"rendered":"The Cool Girl speech"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

So I told you the other day<\/a> that I didn\u2019t like Gone Girl, even though the book was apparently massively popular, and there\u2019s a monologue that\u2019s been given the name \u201cthe Cool Girl speech\u201d which its female readers have found deeply meaningful.\u00a0 According to Slate<\/a>, the speech <\/p>\n

has been cited and referenced and debated over and over in the two years since the best-seller was published. It is, almost indisputably, the cultural legacy of the book.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

What is\u00a0this\u00a0extraordinary speech?\u00a0 Basically, a rant against the Cool Girl, who gives men the appearance of being interested in all manner of Guy Things, having no interest in sex except to please him, and having no other interests to tend to, except\u00a0to the extent that when her Guy goes out drinking or to the strip\u00a0club, she\u2019s perfectly happy to stay at home and, I don\u2019t know, knit or something \u2014 but be there for him when he gets home.<\/p>\n

Or, rather, her rant is really with women who pretend to be this Cool Girl, and with men who think that they really are, because these pretending women think they need to be this Cool Girl in order to get and hold onto a man.\u00a0 Better than nothing, in their view.<\/p>\n

Now, it will probably not surprise you to know that this speech did nothing for me.\u00a0 It didn\u2019t Speak To Me; it was nothing more than one element in the plot development.<\/p>\n

But does the Cool Girl really exist?\u00a0 Does the man who wants a Cool Girl exist?\u00a0 I mean, the last time I checked, the point of a relationship was that you both enjoy spending time with each other, and being in love means that you care about your partner\u2019s happiness and well-being.\u00a0 The world of the Cool Girl is one in which men are fundamentally uninterested in relationships, except to the extent that it means a consistent reliable sex partner, so that any woman who wants a relationship has to settle for a shallow facsimile of a relationship \u2014 or one in which men are outnumbered by women in a given social class\/social circle.<\/p>\n

If that\u2019s the case \u2014 if outside my small family-oriented world, men are uninterested in relationships and family \u2014 well, that\u2019s pretty sad.\u00a0 But perhaps instead it\u2019s Slate writers who live in the alien subculture.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So I told you the other day that I didn\u2019t like Gone Girl, even though the book was apparently massively popular, and there\u2019s a monologue that\u2019s been given the name \u201cthe Cool Girl speech\u201d which its female readers have found deeply meaningful.\u00a0 According to Slate, the speech has been cited and referenced and debated over […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2209,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[153],"class_list":["post-261","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-fiction"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Cool Girl speech<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"So I told you the other day that I didn't like Gone Girl, even though the book was apparently massively popular, and there's a monologue that's been given\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, 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