Girl Logic Page 2
It’s GL that keeps us engaged in sooooo many more things than men could even dream of doing. Just imagine your mom, or your aunt, or your best friend’s mom. You know, all those real-life sixtysomething women taking a Spanish class on Monday night, a pottery class on Tuesday, attending a lecture on Wednesday, seeing the opera on Thursday, an art opening on Friday, and doing educational yoga retreats each summer. Sometimes their GL is working overtime trying to help them figure out what would make them happy: “I’m Sheryl! I’m taking an earthenware formation class while learning about mushroom whispering. I’m flirting with bead making, but cooking with sustainable thoughts is my new passion.” (And just because you took on Oprah and Deepak’s Twenty-One-Day Meditation Experience and only got through Day 3 doesn’t mean you failed; it means you are three days closer to being the person you wanted to be… or thought you wanted to be.)
Now, think of your dad. He’s probably had the same one or two hobbies all his life, right? OK, fine, maybe some dads eventually get into motorcycles or dating Asian women; my point exactly.
Understanding Girl Logic is a way of embracing both our aspirations and our contradictions. GL is the desire to be both strong and vulnerable. It’s wanting to be curvy but rail thin at the same time. It’s striving to kick ass in a man’s world while still being loved by the women around you. Your GL is that little voice in your head that makes you aware of the practicality of your everyday choices, and how they’ll shape your reality tomorrow: “If you don’t read the Washington Post tonight, you will be left out of the conversation tomorrow.” Of course there’s always the dangling carrot of instant gratification: “But what I really need to do is unwind with some Instagram cake-decorating videos; I’ve earned it!” And… here comes GL again, swooping in to remind you how you felt last time you did that: “Didn’t you say your New Year’s resolution was being more informed?” It’s your job to consider the options from every angle; your GL presents them all to you, and the one that weighs heaviest wins. “OK, I’ll read a Washington Post tweet, THEN I can, unencumbered by guilt, watch these Snapchats of regional cheerleading competitions.”
So why am I talking about this? Me, of all the people out there? No, I don’t have a sociology degree, and I’m certainly not a psychologist. I’m a stand-up comic who has spent a lifetime obsessed with questioning things and observing people—especially fellow women—and calling out the humor and pathos in their/our contradictory behavior. I’ve collected a lot of data, and now I get to put it in a book. I wanted to do a baking cookbook, but it would have been all blank pages; the last page would just say, “I don’t like chocolate, sorry.”
This book is my attempt to continue that conversation, to rip open my girl brain and spill it out for you, so you can say, “Hey, wait—hers kinda looks like mine!” The truth is, all women sometimes feel misunderstood, including me. I, too, want thinner thighs. I, too, have freaked out at THAT BITCH STACY after she got the promotion/gig/part I wanted. I, too, have gotten pissed about not being pretty enough and then, in the next breath, gotten even more pissed about the idea that I have to look pretty at all.
But I love that I got to write this book for you. It’s for all the young girls who think they’ve figured it out (which is adorable, but, because you’re still shopping at LF, you… haven’t). It’s for frustrated women in their twenties and thirties who thought they had it all figured out until life was like, “WAIT ’TIL YOU SEE MY DICK!” It’s for older women, too, who might reminisce about the good ol’ confusing days as they give a throaty laugh in their flowy Chico’s pants.
And this book is also for me because apparently expounding on stage for two hours a night wasn’t enough. (Trust me, if I could start a cult I would, but I hate the idea of deliberately dying in a group.)
This book is a celebration of women in all our gray and all our glory. It’s meant to remind you that no matter how kooky, conflicted, or off-kilter your Girl Logic may sometimes skew, that very same thinking bonds you with countless other women across the globe—and it serves a purpose. I promise.
* FYI, I picked a white woman because it’s harder for us to stay young looking. Also I have a better shot at looking like G.P. than I do of looking like Beyoncé.
1
You’re a Woman—Be Confident!
(“But Not So Confident That It Makes Anyone Else Insecure” Is Actually What They Mean)
I wasn’t always so… aware. In my early stand-up years, I was known for making fun of women, specifically the way some of us behave when we’re desperate, hungry, or drunk. I felt I had license to do it because I’d lived it; I was in my midtwenties, so my Girl Logic was a little less informed and a lot less evolved than it is today. I thought I had a monopoly on describing nights out that start with aimlessly wandering, jacketless, through the cold to find a bar, sharing a flatbread (so we don’t feel too fat); crying Lemon Drop–and-chemical-imbalance-fueled tears; eating terrible 3 a.m. tacos; then waking up for work with last night’s makeup still looking sort of good and thinking, “Hey, I can pull this off.” This was my life, and the life of most women my age.
But, when I look back, I can’t help but question my own harshness. I remember doing one joke where I called a line of drunk girls holding hands to walk through a crowded dance floor a “chain of whores.” Surprisingly, women loved it. Fans have even put that joke on T-shirts and worn them to my shows. But if I had to do it over again, I wouldn’t have used that word; I was playing on lazy stereotypes. It may pack a punch, but as a constantly evolving woman and comedian, it’s my job to look beyond the humor and ask myself if I want to be part of making a derogatory word commonplace. I don’t.
Something clicked in April 2015. I was watching television as a male comic publicly shamed a female comic I knew and liked. He called her out by name and made fun of everything from her looks to her personality. His jokes were brutal and unabashed, and the insult to the injury was that they weren’t even funny. I found myself growing seriously pissed at his antiwoman labeling and judging and feeling so righteously steadfast that what he was doing was, well, wrong, that I decided to write a rebuttal piece for a popular website. It was like I was on a literary schoolyard, a classmate had been pushed down, and I was the only one who could help her back up. I’ve had a front-row seat to the constant verbal backlash, write-offs, rumors, and never-ending pissing contests women are subjected to in comedy. It just so happened on that day, for that girl, I could help. Did I change her life, or his? Doubtful, but sometimes you see something shitty happen, and life asks, “Are you gonna stay silent or stand up for what you think is right, even if not everyone hears?”
After my piece went up, my small act of protest lit a fire in me. I realized, as a woman in my thirties, that it was no longer acceptable to use my platform to talk solely about drunk mistakes, nor was that the totality of my existence. It was time to say things onstage that were both funny and meaningful. So I used that perspective to write and shape my Netflix special, Confirmed Kills. I wanted—and still want—women to arm themselves with confidence, so they’ll be that much more prepared the next time someone decides to publicly question why they exist.
I admit I used to make my own negative judgments (“chain of whores”) about other women because one of the trickier aspects of Girl Logic is that it affects both how we see ourselves and how we see other women. It can destabilize our sense of self, making us compare ourselves to and dismiss other women (more on female competition later in the book). Girl Logic dictates that we should all be confident and empowered, but not too vain or full of ourselves. Otherwise, people will “talk.” If you’re pretty, you must be stupid; if you’re fat, you must not be pretty; but if you lose the weight and show off your body, then you’re slutty, showy, annoying, too in shape. (Really, there is an endless list of shitty superlatives that can be applied to anything positive you do.) It’s hard to win, either in the real world or inside our heads. But women need to find solidarity in our similarity—to recognize that
we’re all making sense, even when we aren’t making sense.
When I was growing up in Texas and playing lacrosse in high school, there was a fanatical emphasis on “acting like ladies” when we were representing our school. As if the entire perception of our institution rested on how we conducted ourselves on the field for a sport no one was watching anyway. “Act like ladies”—what does that mean? Be nice? Cordial? Quiet? Faint on a nearby couch? Acting like a man means taking charge and often being tough. Why would I want to be delicate during sports? You see it in professional sports, too—male athletes get paid more, but they also get into fights, yell at refs, and occasionally rape or kill someone. Frankly, I think part of Ronda Rousey’s appeal, at the height of her career, was that she broke away from the “shake hands and smile at your opponent,” knee-length-skirt model of athleticism that she and other female athletes have been taught to emulate. Instead she was straight-up aggressive; she said what was on her mind, and she could back it up. She was our Dennis Rodman. Serena Williams, too—she’s fierce as fuck, and when she isn’t happy, she lets it rip, like when she smashed that racket at Wimbledon. Pretty awesome if you ask me.
People don’t know how to process female aggression, though. They often mislabel it as negativity. I’ve definitely been called negative. But… why? Because I pace onstage, yell in my jokes, and use my body? Because when I don’t like things I call them out? Because I don’t back down when it upsets someone who shouldn’t have come at me in the first place? To me, negativity is a powerful tool. It reminds us never to get too comfortable. I call myself a realist, though—or maybe a pessimistic optimist. I believe in good, that it will all work out, but I refuse to blindly bump into unnecessary hurdles along the way.
Anyway, point is? More women should be like Ms. Rousey and Ms. Williams: not only strong and indomitable, but also unapologetic and able to back it up. Thankfully there are role models in every field. In comedy we’ve got Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Melissa McCarthy, Kate McKinnon, and, hell, all the women of SNL. And take a look at Jennifer Saunders, who might be my biggest role model in comedy. All of them are ballsy and unafraid to give an intelligent opinion, commentary, or impression (even if it, God forbid, offends people), play an ugly character, or simply be who they are. In politics we have more and more women like Elizabeth Warren, and in business we have more and more female CEOs at Fortune 500 companies. And yet, despite all of these positive strides and role models, women still unwittingly succumb to micro forms of passivity every day.
We wear heels we can’t run in, and dresses we can’t breathe in. We don’t leave the house without lipstick—gotta make sure your lips look like plump vaginas!—and we do smoky eye makeup because it’s “sexy” (even though it makes us look like we just choked on a dick and cried). We try to stay as thin as possible—which also keeps us weak. When you’re skinny, you have no body fat; when you have no body fat, you’re cold all the time; and when you’re cold all the time, you stay inside; and when you stay inside… you don’t vote. I may be joking about that last part… but I’m not totally wrong. Ever stop to think that by keeping women eternally preoccupied with superficialities that we might be missing out on important things in life?
Just imagine if we could consistently direct that crazy mental energy to lift ourselves up, instead of put ourselves down. Because when you are truly secure in yourself—when you can analyze situations and figure out what’s best for you, based on you and not some preconceived notion of what society expects—then nothing is a threat. (Except mountain lions! There’s one constantly loose in my neighborhood; OMG, it ate a neighbor’s cat!)
Work It If You Got It
I know I’m not perfect. But despite an insane number of persistently irrational delusions (believing I’ll magically wake up tan, understand the subjunctive tense in Spanish, and I’ll suddenly be able to wear a flowy tank top without looking pregnant), perhaps the only one I’ve managed to avoid is the idea that I’m not good enough. Instead, I “suffer” from chronic overconfidence. It’s not that I’m impervious to Girl Logic–fueled self-questioning; I’m as human as the rest of you. It’s that, in the best of situations, as I’ve gotten older, I’ve learned to channel my GL correctly. I’ve trained myself to listen to my GL when it’s pointing me toward the thing that feels most authentically right for me in the long term, and to ignore it (er, sometimes?) when it’s obsessively projecting past fears or rejections onto whatever weirdness is happening in the moment. If I smile at a guy who doesn’t return it, I might spin out into a momentary fog of self-doubt, but my heart won’t stop beating and my day won’t be ruined. If I tell a joke that doesn’t get a laugh, so what? There’s another joke right after it.
Most decisions we make are fear based: the decision to not take a chance because we’re afraid to fail, to not wear an outfit out of fear of looking “bad,” to not tell someone we’re upset with them because we’re scared of confrontation. If you reduce it down, the reality is that of the 10,000 decisions we make every day, very few of them actually matter to your future, and, often, taking the risk will help you gain more than you’ll lose. For instance, take this common refrain: “I don’t want to text him because the last guy I texted right after a date never texted me back.” You’re letting your hang-ups from past rejection guide your present decision making. When, in actuality, this is a new guy and a new situation (and a more evolved you; most of us progress as we get older, right?). He either will or won’t write you back and, if he doesn’t, so what? There is no way you loved him so much that it’s gonna hurt for long (despite the fact that you’ve already tried out what your first name sounds like with his last name, and maybe made a few allowances regarding his lifestyle: “He loves taxidermy, so maybe I could learn to stuff a cute mouse or something”). Truth is, why would you want to date a flake? For God’s sake, there are celebrities out there who have killed people, no one cares, and you’re still a fan! They’re still celebrities! You think the world is gonna notice if you send one dumb e-mail, wear the wrong shoes, or wink at a guy who doesn’t like you?
When I don’t get a part, I’m shocked (but why was it even between me and Jennifer Hudson in the first place?!). When a guy doesn’t call me back, I’m floored. “You have a roommate, use an iPhone for your ‘photography,’ have an illegitimate child, and you aren’t calling me back? BLOCKED. You are dead to me.”
Let me reassure you: my confidence isn’t based on any solid irrefutable reason. There’s never been anything in my life I truly excelled at aside from comedy, and even that is subjective. I’m not a rapper. I’m not a model. I’m not an athlete. I don’t know a good investment when I see one. I have no idea how to wear horizontal stripes correctly. And everyone has insecurities, of course. Me, I hate my thighs—I can never wear the tight pants that fashion wants me to wear because my thighs are not those of a ten-year-old Japanese boy. This torments me daily. So what do I do? I accept the existence of my meaty haunches, and I do squats. I figure if they’re gonna be big, let’s make them strong.
P.S. Thanks, hip hop culture, for making it easier for women with meat on their bodies to show it off—and for allowing more men to admit they like it. “But stop body-shaming thin girls!” you might cry out, to which I would cry back, “Uh, I am thin, and I don’t feel shamed. Just slightly annoyed most of the time.” Moral of the story? Let our bodies be our bodies; quit studying and labeling them. No one looks at a linebacker and says, “Wow, it’s amazing he found a niche spot in the NFL! He’s sooooo confident.”
Me? I like myself, thighs and all. I know it’s sort of de rigueur to hate yourself—“I’m such a hot mess,” “I’m so pathetic”—but I won’t make jokes like that because they only feed the idea that women should hate themselves. I might say I have the table manners of a starving coyote or that I’m dumb because I think if I just chew Sour Patch kids fast that will, somehow, burn calories. But, deep down, I don’t believe there is anything I can’t do. If someone told me I had to choreograph a Broadway
show, I think I could do it. Part of me secretly thinks I might be the best singer in the world. Delusional? Totally. I like to think high school was all the things I was bad at (math, essays, chemistry, running, and cleaning my room), and now, as an adult, I only have to do things I’m good at. Comedy! Sleeping! Squeezing my dog! Texting back! HUSTLING!
Like I said, I’m not superhuman. I’ve just grown and changed a lot, and learned how to make my GL work for me instead of against me when it comes to believing in myself and accomplishing my goals.
Anyway, there wasn’t that one summer when I got my braces off and came out of my shell, or some life-changing moment when I saw Richard Pryor and thought, “OMG! Comedy is what I’m born to do!” That confidence was just always there. Humor has always been my thing, and before me, it was my parents’ thing, and before them it was my grandparents’ thing (Thanksgivings are exhausting in our house). It’s never let me down. And it’s having this Thing that has helped me feel good about myself, even when I was younger and supposed to be writing self-pitying journal entries. (OK fine, I may have written a few of those, too.)
Maybe your Thing is an awesomely exaggerated body part, or an innate ability to sing, or the fact that you don’t get squeamish around bodily fluids. (Hi, natural-born ER doc or serial killer!) You can rage against it, but if this thing benefits you and others, why not embrace it? If you’re a genius, you will always know the answer. If you’re gorgeous, you will always stand out in a crowd. If you’re an athlete, you will always be good at sports and evading arrest. And if you’re funny, you will always be able to make at least one person in the room laugh, and that’s a beautiful and valuable thing.