Despite being the words of a psychopath, there's something eerily accurate about the now-famous "cool girl" passage in Gillian Flynn's "Gone Girl." Amy Dunne, former Cool Girl and wife of Nick Dunne, flawlessly assumed the persona Nick wanted from her, only for him to cheat on her with a younger, hotter, and even cooler girl. Flynn's exploration of this trope exposes how being the Cool Girl actually gets women nowhere in life, aside from at the feet of a man who will not respect you more just because you've compromised your true self to fit into some mold of the kind of women that men want.

Flynne writes "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. Hot and understanding.

Cool Girls never get angry; they only smile in a chagrined, loving manner and let their men do whatever they want. Go ahead, sh*t on me, I don't mind, I'm the Cool Girl."

We all know a Cool Girl and have probably tried to be one at some point or another too. We downplay our intelligence for fear of intimidating men. We keep our opinions to ourselves and let men treat us badly because we are too afraid to be perceived as nagging. We pretend to like things that are overtly masculine and dislike things that are girly, like wearing makeup and dressing up. We do things sexually and not that we are uncomfortable with, just so we can be called chill and adventurous and not a buzzkill.

But I will no longer try to be the Cool Girl because I've come to realize that pretending to be someone else comes at a cost. This girl is merely a figment of the straight male imagination, and because of that she has an expiration date. No matter how well you play the role there will be another hot/lenient/super cool girl out there willing to play it better because she measures her self-worth in compliments from men. It's about time that girls learn to value themselves and the amazing qualities they were born with, and not only the ones that increase their appeal to men. Like J.Cole says, love yourself girl or nobody will.

I'm sick of women claiming that they're "not like other women" and being proud of it. What's so bad about being a woman? Believing that you are somehow transcending average women by having masculine qualities only means that you have let internalized misogyny alter your opinions of femininity and yourself. Putting other women down in order to make men like you is probably the least cool thing ever. By doing this we are raising future Cool Girls, but what about smart girls and successful girls and happy girls? Being Cool might mean that you have a long line of suitors, but it's definitely not Cool to have no goals outside of becoming another iteration of the Stepford Wife. If you want to be a stay-at-home mother and wife, go for it. If you like beer and sports and one-night stands, live your life. Be whoever the hell you want to be, but don't be someone you're not for the sake of finding love. In order to find someone who truly appreciates and respects you, you have to be you even if you're just a Regular Girl. Even if you're a normal human being who gets upset sometimes and isn't chill all the time.

I'm sure people will read this and suggest that I'm insecure and bitter; that the Cool Girl exists because they are or they know her. I am not discounting the loads of impossibly funny, witty, and generally awesome girls out there, but rather I'm suggesting that you pay more attention to those qualities. Every girl cannot be expected to be hot, funny, sporty, unemotional, sexual, smart, and carefree all at once, every moment of every day. There's absolutely no reason to put coolness and femininity at each end of a made up spectrum. The Coolest thing to do is to own your peculiarities and imperfections because one day someone will match your brand of weird without asking you to change. Let's start embracing our inner Uncool girls and stop being afraid to order a girly drink or sing along to Taylor Swift or double text a guy. If something bothers you stand up for yourself and drop any guy who complains that you're not Cool enough for him, because that's what a truly cool girl would do.