All Roads Lead to Gone Girl

In 2014, Rosamund Pike changed the world as she narrated her character Amy’s plan in an unforgettably dry tone. “He loved a girl who doesn't exist. A girl I was pretending to be. The Cool Girl. Men always use that as the defining compliment, right? She’s a cool girl.” Amy goes on to describe how she faked her own death and framed her husband, but not before pointing the finger at those who did it. No, it’s not just her husband Nick who drove her to this extreme, but society itself. Her “Cool Girl” monologue calls out every societal expectation women have placed on them; being effortlessly funny, effortlessly hot, effortlessly interested in everything this guy wanted, effortlessly able to fuck, effortlessly able to carry on a conversation about sports, effortlessly smart but never smarter than him, and effortlessly all of these things while never putting up a fight or a frown - they were cool, after all. Cool Girl doesn’t fight, Cool Girl isn’t disagreeable - she’s cool.

A decade later, the parameters of what a Cool Girl is may have changed, but Cool Girl isn’t gone. She’s just rebranded to “that girl.”

If you have even vaguely existed on social media in the past two years, you may have come across the “that girl” trend. It sounds so general, so innocuous; the name itself might suggest that if identify as a girl, you could be that girl - there’s no descriptor to the indicate who “that girl” is. However, underneath the name, there’s a whole world of expectations and toxicity. Ironically enough, the same applies to the overall result of the trend itself, but more on that in a minute.

The “that girl” trend is perhaps best understood by understanding and watching the online presence of certain YouTube and social media content creators like Moya Mawhinney, Nayna Florence, Elena Taber, Claudia Sulewski, Rohini Elyse, Tess Christine, and more. Now, please understand that this is not a knock on any of these women, not even slightly. They themselves are victims of a trend that rose around them and has swallowed up even smaller creators. Essentially, “that girl” is someone whose life is presented in a hyper specific way - while trying not to look like she’s trying too hard to seem that way, either. “That girl” wakes up early, journals regularly, works out everyday, cooks “healthy” meals, is productive all the time, has to always have a thrifted or socially conscious wardrobe, keeps up with the trends without seeming like she is, posts aesthetic and curated content, lives in a glamorous place, and decorates her apartment usually in pastels, amongst other things (and they always have Monet or Matisse on their walls. Like, always). Additionally, there is a constant pressure to be pushing never-ending self improvement, to be reading the right books, to be writing about the right things, to be going to therapy and getting epiphanies every time, and often the content created around this trend will espouse “being your best self” and other self-improvement platitudes.

While none of these things individually are bad things, there’s an intense amount of pressure and scrutiny on these creators, and women in general, to be constantly performing in this way. It bleeds into every moment of one’s life; there is an emphasis on performative casualness on Instagram, where one might post a photo dump of highly curated photos that look intensely pleasing but still have a planned candid quality to them; the shot might not be as glamorous but it was meticulously thought out to look the exact way it does, as does its placement in a carousel of nine other photos. Beauty trends have skewed towards glowy, sheer, effervescent makeup; makeup that is made to look subtle but gorgeous all the same, placing an emphasis on sheer foundations or tinted sunscreen-moisturizer combos, multi-use products, and, above all, clean, unwrinkled skin, which usually takes dermatologists and botox to achieve. There is no escaping the “that girl” trend; the ideal way of existing online and in person is out there, and no one can escape from it.

This trend is a direct result of the reckoning of the way we viewed feminism and the patriarchy that occurred in the 2010’s, and thus, Cool Girl had to change. The expectations were no longer about not being like other girls - no, no, we were living in a post Taylor Swift Squad world. A world that said “hey, maybe Gilmore Girls is unrealistic.” A world where Beyonce had told us we needed to support one another. The lean-in, girlboss, empowered women empower women industry was thriving. So, yeah, Cool Girl had to change. And what’s better than a rebrand? Cool Girl got a facelift and came back as “That Girl.” Now, you could be “not like other girls” but in a feminist sort of way, where you could say you supported women while outwardly performing a brand of toxic femininity that was and is incredibly unachievable and unrealistic.

Now, let’s bring in the heavy weight. Not to be a literature student talking about Foucault, but I’m going to be a literature student talking about Foucault - but don’t worry, I’ll be keeping it simple. Foucault was a French philosopher and literary critic, born in the 1900s. While his work is extensive and I highly suggest you read his work (or, like, watch a video essay if literary theory is not your thing), I’m going to focus on his ideas of surveillance and the carceral state. In his book Discipline and Punish*, Foucault writes about how we are living in a state of constant surveillance, and he uses the Panopticon as a metaphor for societal self-control and discipline when faced when constant surveillance. Take a look at the image below; the tall post in the center is where the guard would sit and all the cells on the wall of this building are where the prisoners would sit. In this scenario, at any given moment a prisoner could be observed, leading to them constantly behaving “appropriately” given the constant surveillance they were under. Foucault posited that one didn’t need to be in a cell to be under constant watch; we, as a society, are always watching and perceiving each other, and we are all performing a certain way, all our lives, due to a sort of invisible gaze of the guard that is societal expectations.

Now, take all that, and add to it the literal hundreds of thousands - sometimes millions! - of viewers certain social media content creators have, and you’ve got thousands of little guards, watching them carry out this life of “that girl,” always demanding more, leaving comments saying that their life is “goals” or that they strive to be like them. You can scale that back and take a look at your Instagram, your friend’s SnapChat, an acquaintance’s Twitter; any person that has social media around you. You and your friends might not be social media stars but you are still performing a certain way on your social media - and no one needs to be outrightly demanding it. There’s a certain unwritten set of rules as to how you must present yourself; we live under such a constant state of perceiving and being perceived that we self-police before anyone else has the chance to. And as a woman especially, when faced with an overarching “trend” that influences every aspect of the way a life should be lived and how it should look, it makes that magnifying glass of surveillance a microscope.

Of course, I would be remiss if I did not offer a thought as to why this specific trend, this way of performing, has grown in popularity and become a sort of default “normal,” especially in the past two years. Quick question - what else happened these last two years? Oh, that’s right, a pandemic.

A pandemic, where swaths of people are working from home or just uncertain. When loads of folks around the planet are falling sick and need to be resting in order to get better. Instead, we get handed a quietly insidious way of continuing to be productive; the “that girl” trend. The reign of girl boss is over, there was no way for her to continue, so it was rebranded and repackaged as “that girl,” a trend you’re supposed to be able to do while, say, quarantining - because hey, you’re home anyways, why aren’t you being productive? Why aren’t you journaling and creating and carrying out activities that call to a higher sense of self while continuing to be productive, this time, just in a vaguely inspirational, mellowed out, motivational quotes sort of way. After all, the “that girl” trend may have a focus on self love and positivity, but it also places an emphasis on getting things done, waking up extra early and doing things. In a time when we should all be slowing down in the face of unprecedented times, this trend asks us to speed up and quietly insinuates that we’re not doing enough, no matter what we do. It says that your femininity isn’t correct unless you’re this sanguine, all-knowing, health conscious productivity machine. The wheels of capitalism keep churning no matter what - it’s only the way the wheels look that changes.

Now, you may be asking yourself where “Gone Girl” comes into all this. Great question - I was just about to get to it.

In the same way Amy Dunne faked her own death, blamed her husband (who regularly used her work and called it his own and also cheated on her!) for it, and disappeared because of it all, I can see a way in which we will, very soon, see the “that girls” have their own gone girl moment. The past is supposed to inform our future, but despite all of the think pieces and takedowns of girlboss culture, we seem doomed to repeat our history. There will be an eventual fallout from this “that girl” trend, some of the cracks of which we’ve already begun to see (I’ll link some great video essays below), and it can’t come soon enough. I only worry that it “that girl” will be replaced with a new, shinier, ever-so-slightly-different persona.

The more I feel the weight of societal expectations heaped upon me, in a world that seems ever closer to shattering, riddled with disease, governments that continuously fail us, a planet that screams for absolution from our ways, and a humanity that continuously turns on itself, the more I cannot stand to look at “that girl’s” shiny, perfectly imperfectly, smile. The life aestheticized in careful flat lays of juices, laptops, and sunrise, the workout sets in tasteful neutrals on perfect bodies, the no-makeup makeup made only for those with skin that seems touched by the gods at night; it’s not realistic and it’s not for a single real, breathing, actual woman I know. I just don’t know how much more of it we can take.

If this resonated with you in any sort of way, let me leave you with the permission to not succumb to “that girl” or the next iteration of the trend. I hope you find the peace within yourself to live life without a performance (easier said than done), to eat another slice of pizza without worrying about your waistline, to sleep in when the world demands a full day’s work at 5 am, to drink too much wine, to get grades lower than A’s, to make mistakes, and be wildly, brilliantly, horribly messy in a world that expects perfection. I want that for you. I want that for me, too. Let’s try and find it.

*I know that book titles are underlined but Substack doesn’t let me do that, so italics is what we have to deal with here, so no one come for me