Desperate for cool, destined for cute

Your neighborhood powerpuff girl decodes why earnestness is cringey

Feb 14, 2025

being earnest was a crime

“You can do it!” I practically shouted from my seat in the math classroom as the substitute teacher struggled with an equation at the board. The heads of every student around me—sophomores, older, and thus obviously infinitely cooler—swiveled in my direction. Some had a skeptical look in their eyes, others wary. But the worst were the ones that seemed to say “what a nerd.”

White noise filled my ears. I remember shrinking back down in my seat, vowing to stay silent the rest of the year. Cheering on the substitute teacher was definitely not cool. Especially as the only freshman in a class of sophomores. Those students were right. I was a nerd.

My teens and early twenties were fraught with the desire to just be cool, yet these same years were filled with episode after episode of trying too hard and my earnestness showing. In other words, the ultimate cringe.

As a kid and in early middle school, I had a strong and peculiar personality. Looking back, my quirks actually were cool… just maybe not the same definition of cool as everyone else has. Which brings us to our quandary. What really is cool? Who decides? Why do they have that power?

powerpuff bb

My own definition of cool has changed throughout the years. The middle school me, powerpuff1 bb, had it right. Safety pins lined up on newsboy caps, making my own skirts out of my dad’s old ties, competitions with friends on who could laugh the weirdest. I should note here that even my family didn’t think I was cool during this age. And I just didn’t care. I was wholly, uniquely myself and would be able to provide if ever you needed a safety pin.

Yet something clearly changed in those tween years that redefined cool for me. Cool became aspirational, which then suggested I had to change something to become it. It was effortless. A certain, je ne sais quoi. To be seen as cool you have to be seen as approved by society normals, but dialed up. But to actually be cool, you don’t care. Cool is a confidence. And if you’re striving to be anything other than you are, well my friends, it’d suggest low confidence.

I believe my confidence tanked around the time many other girls seem to lose theirs—middle school. It also seemed to coincide with me becoming incredibly irrationally angry. I’ve written about this before, and what we can assume was at least partially due to hormones, I think it was also mourning the sense of self that I no longer felt I could be. I withdrew into myself. The contraction of self became an almost erasure.

It was as if the approval of another’s gaze and opinions could inform my own. I didn’t not have an opinion of myself, and if I did, it was not very high. My opinion didn’t matter. Everyone else’s did.

Why was cool so important to me? Was it to belong? To be admired? I have always wanted attention…

My self-consciousness forced me to fit into other people’s narrow definitions of cool. And in my attempt to be well-liked and well-regarded and popular, I lost myself. My presence became smaller and smaller. I was actively fighting against the very thing that I wanted.

You know what’s cringe? Trying so hard to be cool and desperately failing.

The saddest thing, to me, is that looking back, the cool kids were so. not. cool. Why was I trying to fit in with people I actually had zero interest in hanging out with? I don’t think they could have had an interesting conversation if they tried. Why did I consider these kids cool? Because other people did? It’s so weird. In other areas of my life I literally never wanted to be like anyone else. I wanted to be an author. I wanted to be the smartest in the class. That competitive nature does not mesh with flocking sheep. It was like I was building a life of contradiction.

the cringe to cute pipeline

College wasn’t any easier for me. I pushed myself out of my comfort zone and tried to make some early friends… but I had no idea how to talk to them or to play it cool. In one of the most embarrassing things I can recall to date, I asked people about their favorite color, their favorite band, and about the fruit in their home state. I literally had zero idea how to connect with people as a low-personality powerpuff.

And I had a new problem to contend with. People began to call me cute.

One would think this is a positive! But let it swish around your brain for a second. Cute is diminutive. It’s diminishing. It’s for things and people that are small. Cute feels safe. Demure.

Which is exactly what I’d become. Reserved and even more painfully shy. Serious. Overly earnest.

Earnestness, to some, is embarrassing and cringey. It is unfiltered and lays everything bare. To be earnestly genuine, passionate, vulnerable you are exposing your inner most thoughts to societal speculation without armor. It is an undiluted enthusiasm for life, one that harkens back to when we were younger, and probably more awkward… maybe a reason people hate it so much.

As mentioned before, I think coolness is an indifference, a confidence. To be unbothered by the thoughts and opinions of others. Thus, being earnest fights against the detachment. It shows that you care too much. So, in that way, it could be trying too hard.

I am not a serious person. In fact, I love nothing more than being overly dramatic and ridiculous. But I am nothing, if not earnest.

So you can see the issue. I wasn’t aiming for cute, either.

Being called cute used to rile me up until I saw red.

In my mind, people-pleasing and trying to be cool are the same thing. I have been afflicted with both for far too long.

here’s the twist

The emancipation moment actually came with my divorce. It was the ultimate act of acting against a societal norm. It was a deshedding of the strings pulling me in a thousand directions—be successful, be polite, be demure, wear this, don’t wear that, don’t listen to this, don’t say that, stop cursing, let’s wait to see what everyone else wants to do—and an opening up to i don’t give a fuck.

Forget what the influencers wear, or what art people cared for. I began to re-explore the interests and passions I hadn’t for a long time. I picked up photography again, I started writing (!!) in new genres and experimenting in new forms, I threw out my makeup, cut my hair short, and listened to bad music until my ears bled.

The rediscovery of my interests made me realize I actually am cool. I’m exactly who I would have wanted to be when I was powerpuff bb. And I will still always have a safety pin for you in the bottom of my purse.

The irony of treating earnestness as cringey is that the people we truly admire—the ones who create great art, build meaningful relationships, or achieve real success—are deeply earnest. They care. They commit. They try. The coolest people in the world aren’t afraid to look a little cringey.

The real cringe isn’t being earnest. Maybe it’s being so afraid of it, so afraid of what others might think, that we miss out on the real joy of it.

Which brings us to the real cringe—wasting time pretending not to care. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have some bad music to blast and old clothes to repurpose.

Book and wine pairing

“The picturesque town was like a painting against the unruly beauty of the forest. On the surface, it seemed like such a perfect place. A refuge from the chaos of the world. And maybe it was once, before the trees were scooped out to build a town for people to live. Before this place had been touched by humanity. Now, where there were people, there was pain. Even in a place like this” - Adrienne Young, A Sea of Unspoken Things

Adrienne Young does it again with A Sea of Unspoken Things. It’s gorgeous. Atmospheric. Dark. And absolutely inhalable. I don’t want to give too much away, so just trust me on this, pick it up this weekend and enjoy it with a glass of Holocene Wines Yamhill-Carlton Pinot Noir Memorialis from the Pacific Northwest (of course, we needed something geographically close to the story!). Bonus points for the name calling us back to Bon Iver’s atmospheric song, Holocene.

Both 5 stars from me.