Why Being a Girl is Fine.

Here are the facts. Girls aren’t very strong or very fast and they seem scientifically worse at throwing things. No matter how many cross-fit classes I go to or push-ups I make myself do in the morning, that random homeless man who hasn’t been to the gym in ever is still going to have no problem beating me up.

We don’t make Wikipedia articles and we don’t make very much money. We have babies, and we have to sit down to pee, and if life wasn’t bad enough we have to have ten years more of it than boys. I can’t open water bottles by myself.

Being a boy seems so much better than being a girl that if I had gotten to choose, I would have chosen boy a hundred times. Unless, right when it was time to choose they handed out paper and pencils to everyone and then Leandra Medine came and sat by me and was like “Hey I’m putting down girl” and I was like “ME TOO LEANDRA MEDINE. Anything you do I’ll also do.”

I like that scenario because I meet Leandra Medine in it. And she sort of thinks I’m cool, right? I mean, she sits by me. We’re sort of friends in that scenario?

Anyway, I’ve made a few bad decisions but here is the good news: a list of Reasons Being a Girl is Fine.

Girls can interact with strange children.

I can walk up to anyone’s child anywhere and start talking to them, and the kid probably won’t be scared, and their parents won’t either. When boys do this everyone gets in trouble. I’m not saying I want to do this, but I can. If this doesn’t impress you, you won’t love the rest of this list.

I’m pretty sure we don’t sweat as much.

I’m not going to do any research on this, but it seems like we do. Sweat seems mostly bad. It seems a little good, so we sweat a little, but that’s all we need. Which is great news because girl deodorant always contains glitter or mango and is named after gentle birds or whispering. Win win, girls.

I'm not sure what this is for but it's called "truth or pear" and it's definitely not for sweat.

Girls can like anything.

Girls can say “Oh man growing up I was such a tomboy, I loved Legos and I was super into sports” and people think “This is a really cool girl.” Boys can say “Oh, I was obsessed with soap operas and dieting to give myself better skin” and, in a few years or maybe a few months it will be totally cool but society is a little behind right now. Right now girls are the ones who can like anything. Ok that’s a lame reason. But what about clothes, girls can wear boy clothes if they want. Girls have twice the clothing options. I’m trying to pad this list a bit.

We don’t go bald.

If I had to lie awake an hour worrying about balding for every hour I lie awake wording about gingivitis and osteoporosis I would never get any sleep.

Better odds of beating a shark.

Made that one up.

Lotions are ours.

You know how when you hear about to International Women’s Day and you think “cool!” and then you think “wait, does that mean all the other 364+ days are International Men’s Day?” Well, they are, but don’t worry about it, just go to the pharmacy and go to the lotion aisle: eighty different kinds of lotion and maybe three are especially for men. All the rest are ours, girls. It’s like a moisturizing version of that scene in Lion King. Sometimes I worry for a second that I have velvet instead of skin. (Three out of four people didn’t understand this sentence so I’m breaking it down: my skin is velvety soft.)

First dibs out of burning ships and buildings.

This has never come in handy before but it’s a nice-to-have.

Being a girl seems to get more fine every day.

Just 50 years ago we weren’t allowed to wear pants, and 500 years ago we were livestock. Show me a horse that’s in the senate, I’d love to see it, but until you do, I’m going to say girls have getting better best. By the time you get to the end of this list it will be more fine to be a girl than when you started. By the year 3000 it’s going to be insane. And, like I already complained about at the beginning, we live a really long time so we’ll get to hang out in more of it.

I'm partially ears

Last week I got my ears pierced - here's a picture.

One thing about having ten pounds of hair is that ear piercings for me are like stomach piercings or inside-of-the-spleen piercings for other people - they're nobody's business because no one can see them but me. 

It's hard for things to stay nobody's business when you write about them on the internet but something very important happened that I need to tell you about.

You can save $15 if you get a hoop earring instead of a little post earring.

I'm all about saving $15 and I figured I could spend a few weeks secretly looking like a gypsy and then switch it out for a post when my ear healed from having a hole punched through it. Right? 

WRONG. Putting a metal hoop in a piece of skin as fragile and rip-able as wet tissue paper is the worst idea I have ever had. The hoop earring catches on everything. It somehow gets caught on light breezes, and on music and smells. It keeps me awake at night wondering my ear's intact or if my pillow's ripped it to pieces, and when I finally fall asleep I wake up from nightmares about combing my hair.

Here is a useful chart of things I'm worried about my ear catching on.

I have more to say but my ear is making me too tired to write.

Tips for young people

Here's the most useful tip you'll ever read here: the best way to do an impression of an old person, I think, is to add the word "the" before nouns. "I'm trying the yoga lately" or "Load up the Microsoft Word, and do some of the typing."

It seems like maybe taking "the" out would be a good impression of a young person but I don't know if it's that easy. I might know when I'm older.

I realized the other day that the age I've been telling everyone I am all year, and even writing on forms, is actually the age I'm turning this year. That seems like maybe a pleasant surprise but is also pretty embarrassing. I won't make these kinds of mistakes when I'm older.

View fullsize

This woman is 101 and I'm pretty sure she could beat me up. 

Maybe this year, when I finally turn the age I thought I already was, will be the year I get really good at doing impressions of young people. And sitting on couches like I mean business, and doing yoga. And throwing a few punches, when someone deserves it.

What your kids will be like

A few months ago my friend told me that his wife is working at a daycare, and that it’s “the best birth control ever.” 

And I feel like it’s important enough that I tell not just him but everyone: if your wife is working at a day care, you also need to also be using a second form of birth control. I didn’t pay a ton of attention in health class but even with my limited knowledge of reproduction I know that using a part-time day care job as your main method of birth control lowers the chances of pregnancy by about zero percent, in every study.

It seems especially important to remember this because of something that happened the other day in the locker room. There was a mom teaching her toddler to poop, but the toddler was stalling. (Get it! It’s a bathroom joke!)

“Where do babies come from?” the toddler asked in an “I bet this question is going to annoy you and that makes me so psyched to ask you” sort of way. Her mom referenced some vague story about sperm meeting an egg.

“But how?”

Her mom changed the subject: “Do you remember, in your All About Me book, who does your body belong to? Who’s in charge of your body?”

“My body belongs to a man!” she yelled. I don't think she learned it in the All About Me book, I think she probably learned it during the nine months she was living inside her mom, connected to her brain, learning what she could do that would bother her the most. That's where I got all of my best material.

Then the girl just started screaming swear words, which I won't type here in case some of my readers are under three and haven’t learned them yet.

Babies can come from anywhere, the jury’s still out on the logistics and even the All About Me book doesn't have all the facts. If you work at a daycare, it could still happen to you.

The picture on the left is me before I had learned any swear words, and on the right is after swear words. Knowing swear words makes you super tan.

I don't have cheekbones

Hey guess what it's 5 great things about not wearing makeup for 5 days:

1. You can rub your eyes in comic disbelief and you’re ready to go to a waterpark at a moment’s notice. I wrote that sentence in a way that makes it seem like those two things are related but the only connection is they’re both easier to do without eyeliner.

2. Everyone thinks you’re sick so they don’t make loud noises.

3. You look enough like a child to order from the kids menu, old enough to get senior discounts at movies, enough like a boy to use the men’s bathroom if the line's shorter, and bad enough to be completely invisible. I haven't tested any of these but I have a good feeling about all of them.

4. Beyonce sings about you. There's lots of language in this, the main language is English but there’s also swear words.

5. Now it’s time to think of something to not do next week. I think it’s going to be laundry.