I'm *Exactly* Like Other Girls.

“I’m not like other girls.”

Oof. Big oof.

I spent a lot of my life being ‘not like other girls’. Girls are just too much drama. I just get along better with the guys. Girlie things? That’s lame. No thank you.

We could go round and round in the ‘which came first’ catch-22 that is the ‘I’m not like other girls’ problem. Did I actually not like those things? Were the girls in my high school just jerks and the guys just more fun to hang out with? It’s hard to say where our real interests and personalities ended, and what media and magazines and everything told us was the ‘cool girl’ began.

You know her.

She eats burgers and drinks beer, and is naturally a size 2 with perfect muscle tone.

She hates working out cause ew but she has abs and toned arms.

Unless you like working out, in that case she really loves the gym but definitely doesn’t look like she’s ever touched a weight in her life. She’s built like a ballerina.

She knows everything about sports, but not more than you…and she definitely loves your favorite team.

She doesn’t wear make up but looks like a cover model - effortless and ready in five minutes with a full face of makeup but you can’t tell cause it’s definitely not make up because she’s natural.

She’s beautiful - but of course she has absolutely no idea, and is just insecure enough that when you tell her she is gorgeous it’s like she’s been seen for the very first time.

She’s great in bed, but never been kissed.

Everything you say is hilarious and she’s never offended because she’s one of the guys. She doesn’t take herself too seriously.

She’s smart but not intimidating. She takes no grief from anyone…but you’re the exception. She’d never correct you in public.

She’s low key, and easy-going, and casual, and not looking for a commitment - until you decide she’s good enough, which is when her eyes will open to how much she needs you.

On and on and on with the contradictions that make the impossible cool girl.

I, like many of my elder millennial cohorts, spent much of my adolescence, teens, and twenties stuck between myself and our ‘cool girl’.

We were told over and over that ‘girlie’ is bad. Girlie is stupid. Girlie is not to be taken seriously. Girlie is basic. Feminine is weak. Feminine is embarrassing. Feminine is silly. Unprofessional. You’re not allowed to be smart and like sequins. You have better not order a pumpkin spice latte!

It takes a while for those threads to detangle. To separate who you are at your core from who you think you’re supposed to be. To deprogram all of the programming that tells you you shouldn’t like these things, even if you really do, because no one takes a woman in a pink top seriously. You’re supposed to look put together, but you’re not supposed to try. How embarrassing.

Eventually, we untangled the knots. Realized we can be all of those things, and didn’t have to be any of them.

Eventually, we realized that being ‘just like the other girls’ is wonderful. That when someone says ‘you’re not like other girls’, it’s not a compliment. Sure, maybe that’s how they mean it….because well…we hate women. Why else would they want you to “not be like” them? Think about it. Girls going to a Taylor Swift concert, getting decked out, cheering for her? Crazy, obsessive, fangirl behavior. Guys wearing jerseys with the name of a 20 year old boy sprawled across the back, screaming at the TV because they know better than the coach, ruining their families entire day if “their” team that they’re not on loses? Well that’s dedication, baby.

We’re so trained to look down on quite literally everything that women and girls do that is not in the self-sacrificing service of others. Ever notice how no one mocked pumpkin spice when it was in the kitchen being used to make cakes and breads and pies for everyone on Thanksgiving while everyone else watches the game and it wasn’t until it was in silly little coffee treats we got just for us that it became the random bane of everyone’s existence? We mock it, we shame it, we trivialize. Make ‘em feel stupid. Well I don’t know about you…but I’m over it. I’m going to continue to take video calls with CEOs with my loudly floral wallpaper in my office and my bright pink lipstick on because I like it.

Eventually, we stopped caring if you think the things we like are ‘basic’. Things are basic because they’re popular and they’re popular because they’re good.

So I’m just stopping by to say…

I am exactly like other girls.