Remember how this was supposed to be done for my parents' fortieth anniversary? Yeah, me either.
(If you're lost, feel free to check out Part 1 and Part 2 first.)
(If anyone is reading this besides my parents, who deserve this effort
and more even if it's only read by them. I love you guys.)
Where
were we? Oh, yes. I had taken one post to describe my heroes, and
another post to describe how awesome I was, and right when I was about
to get to describe WHY I turned out awesome, and also modest, and did I
mention I was about to compare myself to my heroes?--I sort of vanished
into Korea. (Damn Korea.) (Possibly I'll try not to curse anymore in
this love letter to my parents, whom are rather conservative.)
Ahem.
So. I possibly ran out of words because I am not MUCH like my heroes,
unfortunately, which sort of deflates my point--if you can do that--but I
DID grow up to be pretty confident with a rather fresh mouth, and
seriously, you want your daughter to grow up like this. You do. (Don't
worry, moms that I know--SHE WON'T TURN OUT LIKE ME. Well...probably.)
Wow, I have really lost my point. LET'S JUST COMMENCE, SHALL WE?
Golden Rules For Raising a Kick Ass Daughter in the Style of Tina Fey
(Expect her to curse every now and then.)
1. Pray she "peaks" at 50. Mindy Kaling and Tina Fey made this point very clear: if your daughter isn't Pretty at 17, THANK YOUR LUCKY STARS.
Of
course, you can't actually do anything about this, aside from encasing
her in a burkha (or handy ivory tower, if you want to go all fairy tale)
or marrying the ugliest partner you can find, but I wouldn't really
recommend any of those options. Here's what you can do, even if she has
porcelain skin and perfect hair at five years old: bring her up in a
household that focuses on other things. And this should start in the womb. (The Huffington Post did a fantastic article about this phenomenon here, which you should really read, right away, right now.)
Fortunately
for my parents, they didn't have to work too hard on this, given the
material they were blessed with. Arraying yourself in button down shirts
with belts in weird places at 12 is not the way to attract a lot of
attention for your looks, and it didn't help that I had an
unwieldy-ily-large and rather British vocabulary, an enormous
imagination, and two friends who were just as nerdy as I was. Tina Fey
refers to this phase as "when she relaxed in her colonial lady outfit
after school", which is why she is the comedy writer, and not me. And
she and Mindy Kaling have both included hilarious pictures of themselves
from those time periods, and I won't do that because I am not a
multimillion dollar comedienne. What I will say: at the rather advanced
age of twenty-four, I suddenly started hitting the gym, lost
twenty pounds, cut off my hair, and dyed it blonde, and I was
cute!...for about twenty minutes. Turns out that blonde hair needs a lot
of upkeep. As I frequently find it difficult to shower more than once a
week, you can imagine how well I did with that. For the next three
years.
Why did this happen? (Besides the not-washing-hair
phase, which happened for other reasons that I won't go into here.)
Well. It's true that my parents didn't have to work too hard to keep my
focus off my looks, but it's also true to say that they are both
overachievers. To say
that my up-bringing was not looks-focused would be an
understatement. Let's put it this way: I
didn't learn how to apply makeup until I was twenty. I didn't get my first pedicure until I had graduated from college. My up-bringing was
100% focused
on school, activities, and church. I'm not even sure we owned mirrors
in the house. (Joke.) (Barely.)
This is both
entirely both my parents' fault, as it's their damn genes on my face,
but also of
course not their fault at all, since they couldn't help it. My mother
was born with naturally perfect skin, a fast metabolism, a dread of
sugar, and a great smile. You don't NEED makeup when you have all those
things. My blessed father told us both, over and over again, that we
were the most beautiful ladies he knew. I believed him, because he was
my father, and besides, it made sense that if he was right about my
mother--which he was--then he must be right about me, too! I was
beautiful! Excellent!
(Junior high came as kind of a shock.)
Yes,
well. It gives me things to laugh now, and more importantly, it turns
out that that is THE ABSOLUTE BEST WAY TO RAISE A DAUGHTER. Like, only
the absolutely most important thing you can do. Being shuttled around
between school, activities, and church (also not a looks-focused
organization, generally) I had zero time to stare into any mirrors even
if we had owned them. Instead, I developed interests in many other
things, all of which were focused on my talents and skills, and not my
looks. Music. Art*. Drama. Travel. Knowledge about the
world. Opinions (definitely developed a lot of those). Ability to FORM
opinions and SHARE them, articulately.
Hey: I am the product of two (2) salespeople. The dinner table was not
quiet in our house.
Oh, yeah: the dinner table.
It also turns out some kind of structure and dependability is also
important for raising kids, and that brings us to
The Next Golden Rule...TOMORROW!
*Name that Shakespeare reference!
