Olivia Petter - Millennial Love

Olivia Petter is a journalist and broadcaster. A former publicity assistant at Cond Nast, she has written for British Vogue, the Guardian and the Independent, where she has been a lifestyle writer and the host of the Millennial Love podcast since 2017. This is her first book.

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If youve skipped to this part before reading the book, I get it. I do this, too. This isnt really a spoiler kind of book but Ill bear you in mind even so.

There are a lot of people without whom this book would never have happened. The first is my wonderful editor, Michelle Kane. Im so happy you slid into my DMs. Your unrelenting support and belief in me means everything. Thank you to everyone else at 4th Estate who has worked tirelessly on this book it has been a privilege to work with all of you and Im so honoured to be one of your authors.

None of this would have happened without Millennial Love, the podcast, for which I have many people to thank. My old boss, Dave Maclean, who was the one that asked Rachel Hosie and I to start a podcast about dating as part of our roles at the Independent. Chloe Hubbard, who convinced me to continue the podcast even after Rachel had left. Tom Richell, my patient producer and friend, who once asked me to start editing the show and then silently started editing it himself again once he realised how crap I was at it. Thank you to everyone else at the Independent for your support and encouragement. And back to Rachel. We started the podcast together; Ill never forget how kind you were when I told you about this project. I also want to thank all of the wonderful people who have shared their stories with me, both for the podcast and for this book. Your generosity means everything to me.

Thank you to my friends and family, so many of whom put me up when I was writing this book. Id particularly like to mention Natalie Greenwold, Nanou Onona, Allie Miller, Chloe Taylor-Gee, Lutia Swan-Hutton and Patrick Smith. I must also thank the Cock Warriors (Ella McMahon, Lexi Allan, Bethan Jones and Lola Murphy) for comprising the best WhatsApp group with the worst name. And finally, to my mum, dad, Stuie, Ilyse, Juliet and Asher. Im so lucky to have you all in my life.

Oh, and I should mention my cat, Blanche DuBois, who is purring very loudly on my lap as I write this, probably as a reminder to name check her.

I should have loved a thunderbird instead;

At least when spring comes they roar back again.

I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

(I think I made you up inside my head.)

Extract from Mad Girls Love Song by Sylvia Plath

If I were a Cool Girl, my love life would have been very different. I would not have spent eight years pining after someone who wasnt interested in me. I would not have lingered by countless bars, waiting for someone to look at me. And I certainly would have had sex more than twice by the time I was 23.

The Cool Girl has existed in one form or another for years, but it was author Gillian Flynn who brought it to life most memorably in her bestselling thriller, Gone Girl. Protagonist Amy Dunne spends the first half of Flynns novel pretending to be someone she is not. Then, in a series of sentences, Amy carefully dismantles the identity shes been feigning. Heres how she describes the Cool Girl:

Men always say that as the defining compliment, dont they? Shes 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 shes hosting the worlds biggest culinary gang bang while somehow maintaining a size two, 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 dont mind, Im the Cool Girl.

Women have spent a lifetime being pigeonholed into stereotypes like this. Theres an entire cast of caricatures. Some are generic (Manic Pixie Dream Girls, Spinsters, Career-obsessed Bitches) and others are specific to minorities: Asian Nerds, Quirky Lesbians, Angry Black Women. The journalist and author Pandora Sykes lists these tropes and more in her book, How Do We Know Were Doing It Right, and explains how the flattening of the female identity in this way is a key element of consumer capitalism. Once you identify a trope, you can sell something to it, she writes, which explains why we see these tropes projected in so many advertising campaigns.

But we also see these tropes operate within the dating world. At least we do in almost all the romantic comedies and TV shows I grew up watching. These two-dimensional characters were typically straight white women like me, whose existence was almost entirely shaped by the male gaze. The Manic Pixie Dream Girls (ditzy, ethereal, beguiling) were found in Garden State , 500 Days of Summer and Theres Something About Mary . The Career-obsessed Bitches (harsh, cold and married to their job) were in The Devil Wears Prada , The Proposal and Morning Glory . And the rest were in Sex and the City .

But lets go back to Cool Girls; its a label that stands out from the rest because rather than being one that women fear, its one they aspire towards. The Cool Girl trope was established long before Flynns book came out and, unfortunately, is still relevant today.

Dont be like other girls. Have three female friends who are not as hot as you. Wear suits. Chain smoke Marlboro Lights while maintaining perfect skin. Be French. Be the last person to leave the dinner party but the first to offer everyone high-quality cocaine. Always order fries. Be vegan. Wear matching underwear on weekdays. Do Pilates. Have no social media except for Instagram; post photos of yourself posing with your less-hot friends in an empty bath for no apparent reason. Have angular arms.

The Cool Girl is artfully examined in Elizabeth Sankeys critically acclaimed documentary, Romantic Comedy, in which she and a chorus of critics, actors and filmmakers discuss how some of the most popular films on love warped their perceptions of dating, romance, sex and sexuality. The documentary homes in on films like How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days