announcement: i am a woman

things i thought were dumb 15 years ago:

1. make-up
2. crying
3. kittens
4. skirts/dresses
5. sexy underwear
6. boys
7. scented lotions
8.  jewlery
9. home-making
10. showering

that list today:

1. make-up
2. crying
3. kittens
4. skirts/dresses
5. sexy underwear
6. boys
7. scented lotions
   
8. jewelry
9. home-making
10. showering

as the only girl in the family, growing up with brothers wasn’t a tough thing to do if you thought you were a boy yourself. i remember having to look down at my clothes to verify my gender before walking into the appropriate bathroom (not that it mattered, anyway, since my tiny tomboyish frame was always dressed in boys clothes). but it was that confusing for me. at home, my brothers and i would wrestle, play in the mud, and collect comic books. at school, i would get into fights with boys, have burping contests, and talk about punching things because i thought i was a badass.

over time, hormones sanded my rough edges and a desire to be more socially accepted as a female made me refine my actions and demeanor. but emotions became more overwhelming than i had ever experienced. at 15, i remember being up at 5am, crying at an episode of saved by the bell on tbs. zack was perfect for kelly! why did she have to choose jeff over him?!

it was dumb then, and i still think it’s dumb now — crying, that is. but only because my emotions annoyingly bring me to tears way more than it did 15 years ago. crying is perfectly okay (and encouraged) when you have good reason to do it. and, let’s face it, boys are never not going to be dumb. so crying over some dumb thing a dumb boy did can be dumbfounding, but reasonable. just learn from it and don’t let that dumb boy do anything dumb to you again. oh, and my love for home-making? well, that’s an entirely new thing that i just discovered. it’s funny how traditional gender roles developed organically in my last relationship. neither of us were expecting anything of the sort from the other person, but being a nurturer by nature(r), i found myself filling my time with making a clean/cute home, cooking dinners, cross-stitching and offering “my other” a beer after a long day’s work. he, in turn — because he was making that sweet cartoon money and i wasn’t — took me out and picked up the bill without hesitation. don’t get me wrong; i wouldn’t quit my day job (now that i have one), and i’m not looking to be taken care of, but i really enjoyed it at the time, and i could see myself being really happy doing that if i ever get tired of the workforce.

these days, i’ve noticed my interest in certain things changing. i just got into scented lotions. girls nights with whiskey (one manly exception), face masks and manicures appeal to me. i tell myself that i enjoy them like i enjoy a terrible nicholas cage movie: they’re so silly, how could you not? but underneath my semi-satirical view on hyper-femme activity is a real revelry of womanhood, and i’m finally embracing it. i do my nails. i get waxed. i enjoy sharing the intimate details of my relationships with my girlfriends. it’s liberating to finally come clean after all these years. i am a woman.