This essay was first published a year ago, September 19th, 2023. It’s been modified slightly; namely, my thoughts on the alleged feud between Olivia Rodrigo and Taylor Swift have been removed. If you want to read the original version, visit my archive.
I am about to do something very unchill. I am about to tell you all the ways I’ve been unchill, whilst promoting a sweatshirt I made to commemorate this behavior.
Here is the sweatshirt:
It’s available until the end of the day today, September 19th. I’ll probably offer it again, I just don’t know when. I’m doing a pre-order system, which helps me manage inventory. So, if you’re interested, buy one now. They’re cozy and make great gifts. (Cheers to early holiday shopping.)
Phew. I’m glad I got that out of the way. The thing about being a woman and making art is that it feels as if we’re not supposed to act like we’re selling it. We’re supposed to be humble, innocent, and above all, chill. Any success should be the result of quiet, unseen diligence rather than savviness, or, heaven forbid, manipulation. The female manipulator is the most loathed figure in history. I have resisted so many instincts toward power and fulfillment out of the fear of seeming calculating.
I drew The Chillest Girl in The World sometime in 2018. It was submitted as a gag cartoon to The New Yorker and was rejected. Instead of punching it up and trying to resubmit it, I immediately put it on Instagram. This behavior could be categorized any number of ways, but “chill” is definitely not one of them.
She was drawn in desperation, where all my best art begins. She’s waiting. It’s fine. No, really, it’s fine! She’ll just have four more glasses of wine and smoke another menthol. She’s relaxed. She’s cool. She’s the Chillest Girl in The World.
To me, she was a nod to the impossibility of chillness. I’ll be chill when I’m dead, she says. And, candidly, she was a way for me to laugh about the years I starved myself, physically and emotionally, in an effort to belong.
By the time I drew The Chillest Girl, I was on a roll. I’d discovered that sharing my wants and fears and insecurities felt better than hiding them. I published a number of unhinged humor pieces around this time, all quite stalker-y in nature. I wrote about the people who I imagined were looking at my LinkedIn page, about creeping on various ex’s venmo charges, about obsessing over Timothée Chalamet. These were all attempts to self-express, to ha-ha my way out of yearning and heartbreak and dreaminess. They were irrevocably unchill, and are still among the work that makes me most proud.
***
Chill is hard to define, but I think, in a modern context, it has a couple of facets. First, there’s the maintenance part. Chill girls are decidedly low-maintenance. They travel light. They go with the flow. They don’t sleep with 10 pillows covering their body every night. (Who, me?)
Harry was quick to point this out to Sally. You might remember the scene. They’re watching Casablanca together, but separate.
Harry: “Ooo, Ingrid Bergman. Now she’s low maintenance.”
Sally: “Low maintenance?”
Harry: “There are two kinds of women, high-maintenance and low-maintenance.”
Sally: “Which one am I?”
Harry: “You’re the worst kind. You’re high-maintenance but you think you’re low maintenance.”
I am high maintenance and, reluctantly, after many many years, know I’m high maintenance.
The second chill-factor is nonchalance. Chill girls get over it. The joke doesn’t offend. The rejection doesn’t matter. She lets it go. She moves on.
It’s not very chill to hold onto things, but holding onto things is one of my greatest talents. I’ll remember slights and fights and mean comments from middle school. In an effort to record what happened and be done with it, I started journaling religiously in my 20s. But this only made the memories stronger and more attractive. Letting go, I realized, was not an option for me. In fact, I’m suspicious of whether this process even exists.
Finally, it’s certainly not chill to want validation. That’s probably the cardinal rule of chill. Do not seem like you need much. Do not seem bothered. Be confident, be independent, be nonplussed. Wait, actually, don’t be that. I thought “nonplussed” meant something else. Shit, I’m being unchill again, aren’t I?
***
I’m going to go out on a limb and say that art, in general, doesn’t come from being cool and collected. Art comes from living in an imperfect world with imperfect people, and expressing what that feels like, imperfectly.
And the pursuit of chillness? In my view, it can go one of two ways. You either be drowned in its smallness, or you use it as a lifeboat. A tool for self-expression. You can either become the bag of bones at the bar, patiently waiting for a savior who will never arrive, or, mock the very idea of letting anyone else decide your fate, proudly donning that skeleton on your chest.