Cool Girl: Myth or Reality? « Clarissa's Blog
I had experiences with some US guys, who must have thought I was playing this game of trying to put on a tough image to get in with them, or something. Much of the experiences occurred on the Internet. As I’ve always stated (because it always seems to bear repeating), I come from a different culture, so my attitudes are different and I’m never really sure what games I’m deemed to be playing. I am what I am. In some ways, I could be considered very tough and generally insensitive to social mores, since from my early childhood, I did not feel the need to rely on social approval for my inner nourishment. In terms of environments and quality of air, I am extremely sensitive. I also respond a lot to changes of light.
Metaphysics doesn't abide complexity, so it has to reduce it into something simpler. Consider a child painting inside the lines of a prescribed figure. The figure is that of a unicorn, or a donkey or a teddy bear. Any color that falls outside of the lines belongs to "not Teddy", because what falls inside the lines is "Teddy". Here, we don't have complexity, we have a binary vision, divided into states of being "is" or "is not". In this way, presumably I was deemed to be playing a tough girl game,only to be playing it inconsistently, such that I let down my guard every now and then to show the “real me” — presumably the ultra-sensitive girl underneath that “cool girls” really are, despite the fact that they’re pretending not to be. (After all, it would be wrong for US types to let go of their gender essentialism in recognition of the women who seem to be exceptions to a rule.)
It seems really, really hard to put it across to some US types, that all humans can experience the world positively and negatively. If I experience some things positively and say so, I am deemed to fall on the “cool girl” side of identity. If I acknowledge some negative things, then this is deemed to be “my mask slipping”. Thus gender essentialist ideas (that women are all really weak and only pretend to be cool) are reinforced, whilst the real individual and her actual experiences are stripped of meaning in deference to some concept of categorical consistency (something quite different from characterological consistency and even inimical to it).
Such an insistence on reifying concepts of identity is why I think much of USA culture is insane.
***
Some people invest their egos in their reified identities and some don’t, and to some degree whether one does this a lot of little can be down to cultural factors, engendered in one's youth. A reified identity is one based on an abstraction about masculinity of femininity, and not on something like lived experience, or real subjective states.
My concept of Western culture, for a long time, was that it consisted of investing your ego into a reified identity concept. I tried, with all my might, because I intended to adapt to Western culture, for otherwise, people would keep accusing me of inconsistency for being naturally myself according to my earlier cultural conditioning. Now, finally, I’ve given up. I have to be consistent with my own views, but inconsistent from the point of view of those who believe people automatically fit into categories.
I had experiences with some US guys, who must have thought I was playing this game of trying to put on a tough image to get in with them, or something. Much of the experiences occurred on the Internet. As I’ve always stated (because it always seems to bear repeating), I come from a different culture, so my attitudes are different and I’m never really sure what games I’m deemed to be playing. I am what I am. In some ways, I could be considered very tough and generally insensitive to social mores, since from my early childhood, I did not feel the need to rely on social approval for my inner nourishment. In terms of environments and quality of air, I am extremely sensitive. I also respond a lot to changes of light.
Metaphysics doesn't abide complexity, so it has to reduce it into something simpler. Consider a child painting inside the lines of a prescribed figure. The figure is that of a unicorn, or a donkey or a teddy bear. Any color that falls outside of the lines belongs to "not Teddy", because what falls inside the lines is "Teddy". Here, we don't have complexity, we have a binary vision, divided into states of being "is" or "is not". In this way, presumably I was deemed to be playing a tough girl game,only to be playing it inconsistently, such that I let down my guard every now and then to show the “real me” — presumably the ultra-sensitive girl underneath that “cool girls” really are, despite the fact that they’re pretending not to be. (After all, it would be wrong for US types to let go of their gender essentialism in recognition of the women who seem to be exceptions to a rule.)
It seems really, really hard to put it across to some US types, that all humans can experience the world positively and negatively. If I experience some things positively and say so, I am deemed to fall on the “cool girl” side of identity. If I acknowledge some negative things, then this is deemed to be “my mask slipping”. Thus gender essentialist ideas (that women are all really weak and only pretend to be cool) are reinforced, whilst the real individual and her actual experiences are stripped of meaning in deference to some concept of categorical consistency (something quite different from characterological consistency and even inimical to it).
Such an insistence on reifying concepts of identity is why I think much of USA culture is insane.
***
Some people invest their egos in their reified identities and some don’t, and to some degree whether one does this a lot of little can be down to cultural factors, engendered in one's youth. A reified identity is one based on an abstraction about masculinity of femininity, and not on something like lived experience, or real subjective states.
My concept of Western culture, for a long time, was that it consisted of investing your ego into a reified identity concept. I tried, with all my might, because I intended to adapt to Western culture, for otherwise, people would keep accusing me of inconsistency for being naturally myself according to my earlier cultural conditioning. Now, finally, I’ve given up. I have to be consistent with my own views, but inconsistent from the point of view of those who believe people automatically fit into categories.
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