I was once persuaded by a sales woman at Banana Republic in Manhattan to buy a jacket with the statement that “Every cosmo girl in New York needs one of these”**. In the moment, I nodded my head in full agreement and decidedly handed over my credit card to purchase the beautiful white wool trench coat with a pink candy stripe lining on sale for $99. Now 3 years later and only 5 or 6 wears later (I seem to always save it for a special occasion but nothing seems special enough to dirty a white coat), I’ve come to strongly disagree with the sales woman and here are a couple ideas on what really sets me apart from true cosmo girls:

1. An extensive vocabulary of flowers beyond my current ‘daisies’, ‘roses’, and the one slightly more cosmo ‘peonies’ (which I always say at least two times when spoken outloud because I’m never quit sure how it should be pronounced- scared it will be confused with other much less cosmoy- words)

2. An ability to walk for more than a block in cute heels without either taking them off and switching to flip flops in my purse, limping and complaining or hunting down bandaids in bodegas for the rest of the evening out.

3. An updated hairdo that doesn’t look like a school girl ‘flip and curl‘. Oh and speaking of hair, the fact that I wear my hair up 80% of the time would already exclude me from cosmo girl cliques.

4. Cosmo girls are always fashionably late and make spectacular entrances on their cell phones. I like being early.

5. I love food. And I’m not talking about french cafes here. Let’s be honest: cosmo girls don’t really eat in public and definitely don’t finish off their husbands steaks after licking their own plate. I think on this fact alone the white trench coat would not be nearly enough to make me a cosmo girl.

**Now that I think back on the term ‘cosmo girl’ she used and the sexy magazine she was referring to, perhaps I should have clarified that if purchased, I would generally opt to wear clothes underneath the trench and probably not so sexy underwear under that….