When the “Chill Girl” Grows Up
Alchemizing the “desire to be desired” into something stable and good
Down for Whatever
We all know the type. The girl who sits in so many rooms watching so many guys play video games, patiently waiting for the moment the game is turned off and her presence is once more acknowledged. The sort of girl who has convinced herself that casual sex is fun and that she wants it just as much as he does, who acquiesces to throwing dollar bills at strippers alongside her boyfriend, and who thinks his watching of porn is a given that must be accepted. The girl who doesn’t fuss when she is canceled on last minute, who pretends she isn’t sad. We know her, we don’t love her, we used to be her.
Once, many years ago when my personal sense of morality was especially thin and easily swayed, I was engaging in a particularly egregious and ethically awful sexual relationship with a friend’s boyfriend. A short and shameful interlude. I let him do whatever he wanted to me in cheap motel rooms and the back of his work van in a casino parking garage. I didn’t complain, I didn’t balk at his requests, I didn’t pester him or ask questions. I laughed at his jokes. I choked down coughs when he smoked too much with the windows up. All with the unspoken yet patently clear understanding that I wasn’t going to tell, I wasn’t going to say no and, most importantly, I wasn’t going to ask anything more of him. At one point in this short-lived affair, he called me while he was out drinking and declared “I know we aren’t supposed to have feelings for one another, but I’m really starting to…... you know, you’re just a real down-ass bitch”.
A down-ass bitch! The ultimate chill-girl compliment, what an honor, what a poetic exclamation! Someone go get me a badge with my highest title, my favorite term of endearment! At the time I was actually flattered by this. It affirmed my ability to use my feminine wiles to gain the affections of someone I didn’t believe I could actually gain the affections of. My trickery had worked. I had him convinced I was just that easy. Easy to be around, easy to please, easy to love. While I didn’t even want to actually date him though, much less love him-I wanted him to love me though.
This is my own unfortunate example to show the underlying psychology of the chill-girl archetype. The desire to be desired-loved-is a normal feminine impulse, but I also think this impulse can be subverted in the setting of our modern world. It turns a healthy impulse into what can only be termed “toxic femininity”- a femininity that is shallow and bred by porn culture, a culture in which all desire is actually empty desire. The chill girl wants to fulfill the impulse to be desired without actually riding that desire’s natural course.
She craves the dopamine rush of attention without the commitment and maturity that comes along with what that attention can create when properly nourished and tended to- things like babies, families, marriages- life shifting events and relationships. She operates in this way because she grew up with messaging that family doesn’t matter, that marriage is meaningless and likely will end in divorce anyway, that babies are gross and sticky, and that all of these things are secondary to career and “treat yourself” style self-care. She operates in this way because sexual experiences devoid of meaning are now in fact actually branded as that “treat yourself” self-care to women. Anyone who has ever seen an episode of Sex and the City can confirm this.
All of this messaging is paired with an inundation of instantly gratifying experiences that require no effort in exchange for short-lived pleasure or status. Low effort self-subjugation in exchange for attention strokes the need to be liked in just the right way. The chill girl values the wrong things because her instincts have been hacked by a society that wants to use her and toss her aside. The chill girl allows the empty desire of modernity to flourish.
Ample Desire
Sexual desire, while a very basic impulse, is the spark upon which very good things can be built. A family, a home, a life lush with opportunities to hone our talents and gain new levels of virtue can all be born of this impulse. Ignoring this is to our detriment- it is only in recognizing the power of this rote desire to transform us that we can begin to alchemize it into those good things. If society’s available version of desire is empty and based on false pretenses, then the spark will never truly alight. This is not good for girls and women, neither for men and boys. Instead, we need a full desire, true desire with its roots deep in the dirt, steady but surging towards the sunlight with unfurling beauty.
In a society that encourages the valuation of things that are truly good-such as family-the people flourish. The disjointed nature of current culture and all that it praises that sets the stage for the stereotype of the “chill girl” similarly sets the stage for the “apathetic woman”. Just as the chill girl desires vapid sexual attention, the apathetic woman desires only to be perceived as kind and nice. I even wonder if there is some sort of faction of former chill girls turned apathetic women by way of the false narratives they ate up in their youth which in turn encouraged a sort of sick patterning into their ways of being. As sexual attention wanes, the desire to be the “most inclusive” could take over. Are the former chill girls the women now championing men in women’s shelters? The women policing other women for their wrong-think?
Societal Chill-Girls
Recently, someone criticized an Instagram post of mine that was critical of the statue AGAPE by artist Aske Jonatan Kreilgaard that stands in front of the Women’s Museum in Denmark and depicts a nude male with developed breasts and exposed genitals “breastfeeding” a child. The meaning of the title, Greek for “fatherly love”, is not lost on me. The post discussed the statue in relation to the trend of trans-identified males manipulating their bodies into lactation.
In the caption, I stated “Breastfeeding and birth are the pinnacle of female power, and the thievery of these acts as a power play in the theater of the transhumanistic religion of gender ideology is an affront on every mother who has brought their vulnerable baby full of need to their sore breasts to suckle in the name of survival and the most pure love. Humanity owes its existence to these women, to us. If you are lacking in discernment, hone it. If you have it and are ignoring it, find some courage and clarity and use it. It is the gift we cannot afford to disregard.” The criticism I received in turn was that my distaste for males attempting to breastfeed is narrow-minded and the opposite of motherly love, a topic I discuss frequently on social media.
This is the perfect example of societal chill-girl speak.
“Chill” in the context of a relationship really just means apathetic and easily manipulated. The same can be said for “inclusive” in the context of feminism and politics and womanhood in general. The need for empty attention evolves (devolves perhaps?) into an identity-politics driven lack of personal judgement. Again, the feminine is hacked and when one has been conditioned into expecting this, they don’t even see it happening anymore. The female inclination to be welcoming and sweet and ever-kind becomes twisted into some sort of ugly abomination that in turn actually hurts other women and children.
Apathetic women show no interest in telling the truth. Not every woman who doesn’t speak up loud and proud against certain crimes against their own kind is apathetic though. I don’t fault women who choose to be quiet. Many of those women are doing the most important work-the work of raising children in a manner which strikes the harmful ideology down, no contest. Nevertheless, this disinterest in the truth and in the female embodied reality which needs-BEGS FOR-those same truths to be acknowledged leads to a sort of womanhood that is tainted. All of media’s strange messages bleed into the fabric that makes up the psyche of the apathetic woman, mixing ungracefully into a muddied and dull tinge where there should be vibrancy. Popular woke mantras sew themselves onto her veneer.
I think this happens when the sort of girl who was prone to a sort of “pick me” mentality doesn’t receive the proper rites of passage, the maturation that girls need in order to become women. Often this is in the form of childbirth and mothering-and I think it is no coincidence that these types often are “childfree by choice!”. Samantha Jones certainly never had any babies and I’m pretty sure she would be screeching “Sex Work Is Work!” on the streets with her pussy hat on in a modern day episode of SATC if they were still being made.
Who would be beside her? Female trans-rights activists who hate JK Rowling and who fight for males to be able to self-ID their way into female prisons. Women who put masks on their toddlers despite their cries well after we knew how little they were affected by Covid and how much they needed the social interaction that comes with actually seeing faces. The surrogates/surrogate buyers, and all who claim second party reproduction is a net positive for women without acknowledging the inherent commodification of the female body and of human life. The women who have never known true economic desperation claiming that it is empowering for other women to sell their bodies for cash. The women that bemoan other women for caring about homebirth and breastfeeding as if it is some sort of freakish obsession with being “natural”, the same ones that like to say “you don’t get a trophy for not getting an epidural” and tell pregnant women birth horror stories. The Le Leche League leaders doling out guidance on male lactation (check out
for more on this topic). The intersectionals, the liberals, the delusionals. The women who claim getting beat while engaging in sex is a harmless kink and that consent is enough. These are the women who are the down-ass bitches for the politics and systems that hate us and hurt us.These women gobble up empty praise from drag queens and male obstetricians and OnlyFans patrons and male BDSM enthusiasts just like the chill-girl gobbles up empty desire from video game skater boys who only remember to text back when they want something. The proliferation of this version of womanhood is a testament to the effectiveness of the cultural messaging of our times. BE KIND! BE NICE! BE INCLUSIVE! Be completely tricked and happy about it!
The Opposite of Chill is Warm
I want to be a warm girl, not a chill one. And I’m not one who is in opposition of using the term “girl” to refer to myself as a grown woman either. I think it is entirely possible, desirable really, to fully mature into womanhood while integrating the best parts of our girl-selves. I think of girl-me and think her ability to hyper-focus on different hobbies, crafts, time periods in history, and animals was amazing! Her dedication to her female friendships was admirable! Her sweetness and sense of adventure were endearing! Girl-me holds some of the best parts of me.
A warm girl embodies the female capacity for creation. She is warm in the sense that she is receptive, open, she has a spirit of hospitality. Yet we must not forget that warmth is fueled by passion and an ardent sense of righteousness-one that exists in abundance in the female soul when properly tended to and given allowance.
This sort of girl is the sort of girl I hope my daughters grow into. A girl who doesn’t put up with nonsense and has the wisdom to weed out who is worth extending grace to and who isn’t. Who knows that fiery righteousness and knows how to use it for her own protection and for the good of others. Who keeps a sense of self discipline tempered with adventurousness and who is both discerning and delighted. Warm, sweet, kind but not so kind she can’t discriminate between good and evil when warranted.
Ardent Motherhood
Apathetic women become apathetic mothers who choose to prioritize the whims of males over the safety of their daughters and these women cannot raise these sorts of girls. Apathetic mothers who claim “sex work is work” can’t reasonably protect the dignity of their daughters. Apathetic mothers who think it is perfectly fine to chemically sterilize their daughters so they can function in hook-up culture despite the side effects cannot build a foundation of health and functioning fertility for those daughters. Apathetic mothers are the ones posting content that demoralizes their children for likes and their counterparts are the ones in the comments saying “it’s not that serious, lighten up!”.
Apathetic women set the stage for legacies of pain, dysfunction and depression. The attitudes and practices we endorse as women and mothers directly affect our children. Women who endorse inclusivity above all are so overly concerned with this endeavor that they fail to include their children’s long-term capacity for flourishing human vitality in their priorities.
I envision the work of the mother as a steward more than anything else. It is our lot in life to guide our children down healthy, right paths and to hone their natural inclinations for good. Apathy has no place in a good motherhood, apathy is the enemy of that sweet goodness and warmth that is fed by the same fuel that feeds both protector and warrior. This is where the desire to be desired comes full circle. We succeeded in capturing desire and created life with that desire-now we need to use that energy in a meaningful way.
As a former chill girl turned mother of daughters who was able to swerve the woke apathy by way of intense life experiences and a good dose of humility- there is nothing more that I want for my girls than to know true warmth and to be it. I realize now too, that it is I that must hold vigil for them in a way that exemplifies this light. A candle lit, the flame small enough not to be snuffed out in the wind. Calm and steady, ever present, and ever-available to relight their own flames should they need it.
*Consider taking in this related read on what warmth and femininity can look like*
Emily! This was an incredible read. This is the woman I am becoming and the type of mother I am called to someday be. A fierce protector of my future daughters and of woman and girls the world over.
I was really moved by this sentiment: “The chill girl allows the empty desire of modernity to flourish.”
My last romantic partnership is where I started to, at long last, give death to the chill girl part of myself who—from a place of numbness, apathy, and fear of abandonment—continued to engage with a man deeply captured by the content of an industry that is inherently harmful to women and girls. I finally said no and began to speak my mind on the matter when I began to realize what you so eloquently articulated. My chill girl attitude, complacency, and abandonment of self in order to stay in connection was actually feeding a system that is inherently anti-life and ultimately harms everyone.
I am so grateful for voices like yours that courageously take these issues of the modern day head on and call a spade a spade. You inspire me more than you know, dear friend!
I love this post - like so much of your writing Emily, it communicates effectively, gracefully, unflinchingly. :)
Being a former ‘chill girl’ myself makes it hit home hard. The thing that snapped me out of it was anger - ‘inexplicable’ righteous bubbling anger in my heart. It knew something wasn’t right before I did. It seems that passion (for self and others) takes forms of both love and anger - and that’s the sort of constructive, self-protecting muscle that has to be nurtured, listened to, exercised. Here’s to speaking up, warmly!