On my 11th birthday, I asked for a copy of Gone Girl. Everyone who knew me knew what I wanted and it was Gillian Flynn’s best-selling novel. When June 17th arrived, I ended up with three. Yes, one was from my parents. No, they did not research and check if it was age-appropriate. So there I was, with multiple copies of the only thing I wanted for my birthday, blissfully unaware of the stronghold this book would have on me for years to come. 

The grasp still hasn’t loosened. 

Amy Dunne. The perfect girlfriend, wife, daughter, friend. Loved beyond measure, adored by everyone blessed enough to be in her vicinity. Who doesn’t want to be her? My 6th grade self was no exception. So fun, so light, the ultimate it-girl. Works in print journalism? Even better. Safe to say, my career goals have not changed since 2017; neither has my urge to be Amy Dunne: cool girl. 

While writing a short story for one of my classes, I found myself writing a paragraph that triggered the Amy-thought-spiral:

I wanted you to see me as that cool girl who could take joke. Now I see that you wanted me to want to be that cool girl who could take a joke so you could tell your friends you were dating the cool girl who can take a joke.

Sound familiar? Yes. Would I call this a subconscious rip-off? Dangerously close to being one, yes, but not quite. After all, it was a completely independent thought, no Amy lurking in my mind when I typed this. Why, then, did I find myself coming back to it? 

The fact that I wrote this a good five years after having read Gone Girl for perhaps the hundredth time bothered me. It was for a fictional short story assignment, but nothing is every truly fictional. Not for me, at least. Everything is drawn from something, and I constantly kept pondering over these few sentences. Was I that starved for attention? Have I always been that girl? 

The Amy Dunne Effect on an 11 year old brain. She etched herself so deeply, that even despite knowing her psychotic, sociopathic tendencies, I began to channel her from a young age. Laugh at the right time, frown when required but look cute while doing it, roll your eyes at the exact moment, bite your nail just so when you know they’re looking and boom. Hook, line, and sinker. The only loser in this entire situation, ironically, was me. 

In a world constructed primarily to hate women, the term cool girl becomes just another way to label and control. Attention-seeking isn’t attention-seeking, it’s pick me. Just like rage isn’t rage. It’s female rage. With everyone instance of ‘female rage,’ the cool girl persona slips. Of course he won’t like you if you’re political and opinionated and vocal and loud and just generally have a personality. Doormats are so much more preferable. What color would you like me to be today? Sorry if I was too rough on your shoes.

I’m pleased to say I grew the fuck up and left Amy Dunne cool girl behind. She’s still there, occasionally makes an appearance, for the right person. The curtains then rose for Amy Dunne, sociopath. The calloused woman under, meant to be hated, scorned. The perfect anti-woman. 

Yet, I’m at the front of the crowd, cheering for her. After all, part of her resides within me. Six months ago, I got drunk and told a friend I felt like I had sociopathic tendencies. I don’t, just so we’re clear, but drunk me was on to something. Why would I say something so absurd if it wasn’t true? Drunk thoughts are supposed to be truthful, uninhibited. 

Years spent being called cold, arrogant, stand-offish. Purely because I was shy and unable to communicate. Often being told no one would want to get to know me if I was so icy. Now, I’m proud of it. Yes, I really don’t want you to speak to me. No, I cannot put in the effort to be that cool girl. Perhaps this is where my self-inflicted ‘sociopath’ label came from. But if Amy was one, then I’ll happily wear the crown. Tell me if it fits. 

I’d recommend reading this entire thing while blasting Paris Paloma’s labour or Dove Cameron’s Too Much. A friend told me this week both songs bothered him (had to be a man, right?) so obviously I overplayed both. The female rage arrived at some point and completely swept the cool girl out of the frame — I’ve never been more grateful. Becoming a misandrist is so much more fun. God knows women have more reason to foster hatred. 

Amy Dunne, forever my icon, playing both sides of the field. Who says I can’t be the cool girl and a man-hating sociopath? A blonde, white, personality-quiz-writing woman upended my entire world in 2017 and continues to remain at the forefront of my mind. What would Amy Dunne do? should be every girl’s mantra. In the end, she got everything she wanted. Where have the rest of us gotten by keeping our mouths shut and our insanity in check? Writing this at 4:07am, that’s where. 

If anyone’s interested, I’ve pasted the cool girl passages from Gone Girl below. 

“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, shit on me, I don’t mind, I’m the Cool Girl.

Men actually think this 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 bag and say: The bitch doesn’t really love chili dogs that much – no one loves chili dogs that much! And the Cool Girls are even more pathetic: They’re not even pretending to be the woman they want to be, they’re pretending to be the woman a man wants them to be. Oh, and if you’re not a Cool Girl, I beg you not to believe that your man doesn’t want the Cool Girl. It may be a slightly different version – maybe he’s a vegetarian, so Cool Girl loves seitan and is great with dogs; or maybe he’s a hipster artist, so Cool Girl is a tattooed, bespectacled nerd who loves comics. There are variations to the window dressing, but believe me, he wants 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.”)”