why I no longer aspire to be the cool girl but instead a raging bitch

It’s 2020. The world is in lockdown.
And being the woman I was trained to be, my first thoughts aren’t about survival or safety. They’re: How can I get skinnier? How can I manifest that boy back? How can I stop being so emotional all the time?

I wanted to be the Cool Girl so badly.
The palatable, chilled-out 00’s dream girl with the messy bun and baggy tee, the one that hangs just high enough to show the curve of her butt cheeks. The girl who grabs a beer from the fridge like she’s in a rom-com and cares just enough about a man to make it sexy, but never enough to make it needy.

Then I found out the guy I’d been dating for months had lied about having a girlfriend the entire time. And my first thought wasn’t what a piece of shit. It was: Now… how do I win him back?

I wince writing this.
This man wasn’t someone I wanted, let alone deserved, but like so many women, I’d been trained to prove my desirability to men who gave me scraps. Men who didn’t even like me as a person — just as a performance. I knew I was merely a body in the sheets for him, but to me, he was everything.

And to this day, I am thankful — thankful for what he taught me about love, about how others perceive me, and most importantly, why I no longer wanted to be the Cool Girl, but instead a raging bitch.

Lockdown, for many, brought newly-found abs, a love for banana bread, Zoom quizzes and TikTok dances. I, however, found feminism — and within feminism, I found myself.

It sounds almost absurd that I only discovered feminism at twenty-two, especially given that my page is now dedicated to it. But through a handful of hard, necessary reads, I realised the Cool Girl I had been aspiring to be was patriarchy at its finest: submission to men, packaged beautifully with a bow.

I was patriarchy’s wet dream at the time — a vulnerable, traumatised girl who had spent years obsessing over what boys thought of me, with very little thought given to what I actually wanted in a partner.

Once I started to learn more about feminism, I became obsessed.
It was like finding a language I’d been speaking my whole life but never had the words for.

And with it came an emotion I’d spent years suppressing; one that’s deeply frowned upon in women: anger.
I let it take over my body.
I let it rise in my chest, burn in my throat, shake in my hands. I didn’t try to smooth it over or turn it into something palatable. I stopped translating it into sadness or self-blame.

That anger was a compass. It pointed to every place I had been silenced, every moment I had been taught to stay small, every compromise I had made to be liked. It showed me that being “easygoing” wasn’t a personality — it was a survival tactic.

I didn’t want to be easygoing anymore.

I didn’t want to be the Cool Girl.
I wanted to be the Raging Bitch, the woman who will take up too much space, ask too many questions, and refuse to smile when it’s not funny. The woman who knows her worth and isn’t afraid to be inconvenient in defending it.

And once I met her, there was no going back. A few years on, I’m at a house party with my boyfriend’s friends.
We’re all half-drunk, the music’s loud, and I overhear them “joking” about rape.

Then I hear one of the girls — smiling, almost proud, wearing her Cool Girl like a badge say:

“Yeah, I didn’t believe she was raped either. She’s so attention seeking.”

It hits me like a slap.

I recognise her instantly, not her face, but her posture, her tone. I know her because I used to be her. The girl who chooses male approval over solidarity, who laughs along with cruelty to keep her place in the room. The girl who thinks being “one of the lads” is safety, when really it’s just another kind of danger.

Except now, I’m not her anymore.
And my anger doesn’t make me swallow my drink and stay quiet. It burns through my chest, down to my fingertips.

The Cool Girl would’ve smiled.
The Raging Bitch doesn’t.

So we leave the house party, and my boyfriend at the time turns to me.
He tells me I’m overreacting. That it was just a joke. That he wishes I could just be cool.

That word.

Cool.
The word that used to be my goal, my religion. The word I once bent my spine to reach, shaved down my edges to fit. The word that meant approval, belonging, safety — or at least the illusion of it.

Now, it feels like a cage.

Cool means laughing when it’s not funny. Cool means shrinking so men feel big. Cool means being complicit in cruelty so you can keep your place at the table.

And in that moment, with the street lamps blurring through my tears, I know with absolute certainty: I didn’t ever want to be cool again.

I want to be loud. Confrontational. Uncomfortable.

Now, being a raging bitch doesn’t mean I’m cruel. It means I’m unwilling to contort myself into something that makes other people more comfortable at my expense. It means I can spot disrespect at 100 paces and call it what it is. It means my worth isn’t up for debate, and my boundaries aren’t up for negotiation.

The Cool Girl wanted to be liked.
The Raging Bitch knows she’s not for everyone — and sleeps anyway.

And honestly? I think that is pretty cool.