Girl Logic Read online

  Quick aside: Some of you folks reading this might be in high school. If so, I want to tell you something: IT REALLY DOES GET BETTER. Unless you’re a mean weirdo, you’ll most likely end up being praised, as an adult, for the very things you were mocked for in high school. So just hold on a little longer.

  There’s nothing wrong with knowing how good you are, and there’s nothing wrong with taking time to figure that out. One positive aspect of GL is that all its obsessive loops of self-talk can actually help you psych yourself up, be a little prouder, and do your best, no matter what you’re doing. Plus, there’s nothing wrong with being cocky, especially as a woman. You don’t have to be a jerk, but there’s nothing wrong with being confident. The next time you look great or do something amazing and someone compliments you, just say, “I know! Thank you!” The only time cockiness doesn’t work is when you can’t back it up. (It’s also worth noting that cockiness is generally considered a “male” trait, named for a male body part that was named after a male chicken: a cockerel. A cockerel’s job is to hang out with all the hens and fertilize the eggs and be super aggressive and make a lot of noise. So now you get it. Confident women aren’t called snoochy, but maybe we should be. I’m SNOOCHY! NOW TELL ME HOW GOOD I LOOK AND GET OUT OF MY WAY OR I WILL SUFFOCATE YOU.)

  Are you still with me? What’s that? You’ve taken this book to the toilet? Gross. Anyway, we were talking about confidence. The true kind that comes from knowing what you’re good at and what you’re worth. The kind of confidence that gives you the courage to demand what you deserve, even when you’re the only one who thinks you deserve it.

  The way I figure, if you operate from the assumption that nobody knows anything (which is largely true in show business, as it is in most other industries—except I guess like the CIA; I feel like they know a lot), then one of three things happen when you ask for what you deserve:

  One: You ask and they say yes.

  Two: You ask and they realize, “Oh wow, didn’t realize she was worth that much! She must know something we don’t.”

  Three: They say no, but they walk away knowing you value yourself… or that you’re wildly off base in your assessment of your value. But the point is, you tried. People will always respect you for trying… or think you’re annoying, but at least they will remember you. And hey, when you turn out to be a success? They’ll look back on it like, “should have given her a chance.”

  I think a lot of us start out with this sort of confidence and end up losing it somewhere along the way. Our Girl Logic gets stuck in a negative loop and overrides our ability to see ourselves clearly: “If I ask for a raise and they don’t give it to me, then I’ll feel awkward, and if I feel awkward, then I won’t feel comfortable speaking up at work, and I might start to do a bad job and then they’ll be like, ‘Ew, the nerve on her to ask for a raise when she isn’t even good at what she does in the first place.’”

  When I was little, I had a strong sense of what I would and would not tolerate, and of what I knew was right (um, even if I was wrong). I thought most other people were wrong, and I wasn’t totally wrong to think that. I’m reminded of my first, and only, experience modeling in a childhood fashion show. I was five years old, doing a JCPenney kids’ show. They stuck me in an ugly pink and red apron with giant quilted hearts all over it. And white tights. WHITE TIGHTS! QUILTED ANYTHING! I threw a fit. It was ugly. My mother pulled me aside and explained, “These are professionals, and you’ll wear what they tell you.” I did the stupid fashion show, walked offstage, and ripped the outfit from my body. Right there, in that multipurpose room in the employee section of the Prestonwood Mall, my fashion career was finished. Was I wrong to throw a fit? Maybe. Does anyone here remember a time in children’s fashion when pink and red quilted-heart aprons and white tights were chic? NOPE!

  That sense that I knew best—because so many other people were clearly inept—has followed me through life. Most people know a lot about, like, three things. Just because someone is in charge doesn’t mean they should be, and just because they can express an opinion doesn’t mean you should listen to it. Executives create bad shows, politicians do horrible things on purpose, stylists send people out on red carpets wearing garbage trash. Hey, I’ve been on sets where the makeup artist made my eyebrows so dark I looked like an angry cartoon monkey. I walked on set and my Mexican hairdresser looked at my face and was like, “changa!” I’ve read magazine articles about me with my name misspelled two different ways IN PRINT! Not everyone is in a position of authority because they worked for it. Nope, most people get where they are because the guy ahead of them died, they knew someone, or they simply did a decent enough job long enough that eventually they got promoted.

  Is constantly questioning everything and everyone exhausting? Yes! But it’s how I’m wired. Is it because I’m Jewish and our religious pastime is sitting around asking, “Why?” Perhaps. Or maybe, when it comes to certain areas of my life, my Girl Logic is stuck in high gear, pushing me constantly to do more, achieve more, checking and double-checking that things are going well. I’ve seen enough fuckups at my own expense that I’ve chosen to be on the offense to mitigate any impending poor decisions being made on my behalf. Because, at the end of the day? It’s your career, life, face, image, and feelings on the line, and no one should care—or have the power to fuck things up for you—more than you.

  On a deeper level, I’ve always believed I deserved respect. Sure, I had the same nitpicky, self-doubting thoughts every other girl has growing up; my Girl Logic, at times, drove me bonkers when I’m hit with a spin cycle of “What if they don’t think I’m cool enough?” and “Should I just stay quiet and see what happens?” GL urges you to demand respect, but it also reminds you that the path to achieving it can be riddled with name calling, doubt, and struggle. I mean, no one wants to be feared and hated. Except maybe Putin. Oh, and Kim Jong… any of them.

  But, if you think about all the decisions—and all the hardship and pain—that have gone into getting you to this point in your life, is it so insane to think that maybe you’ve been through enough? Is it so insane to think you deserve to be treated like a worthy human? As I got older and learned more about myself, my GL evolved with me. Fortunately, it changed in a way that helped boost my confidence instead of bring it down. I learned to expect people to respect me because I respected myself. Of course, this was also partially instilled by my strong, smart, independent single mother and her “take no crap” New York attitude. (I want to note here that anything good that’s happened to me in life is directly because of my mom.)

  As a teenager, I was lucky enough to have body confidence. Inexplicably. Well, maybe not that inexplicable: I had boobs. When I was thirteen, my neighbor Aaron threw a pool party. (Aaron was thirteen, too—fortunately this isn’t a story about getting molested by a man next door. I know, the second I said “when I was thirteen” and “neighbor,” it sounded like it was going that way.) The guys at the party asked the girls to take part in a swimsuit contest. Hey, we were teenagers in Plano, Texas, in the ’90s—none of us had a clue what sexism was! Me being me, I jumped at the opportunity. I knew that, with a chest like mine, I was totally gonna win the prize: a coveted twenty-dollar Blockbuster gift card.

  Don’t get me wrong: I wasn’t “hot” or anything, though I did have the best Far Side T-shirt collection in all the land! But I’d learned that boobs meant something, particularly after my friend Sandra’s mother, a life-size 5’ 10” Barbie doll with long ripples of blonde hair, said to me, “Good God, child, I wish I had your chest!”

  What I gleaned from this powerfully inappropriate statement was that the most beautiful woman I knew was jealous of something I had. Talk about an ego boost.

  Though the other girls might have been able to wear braces and still look cute (what the hell!?), I thought I had the swimsuit competition on lock. And yet, no sooner had we lined up, my grown-woman chest all pigeon-puffed out, that Aaron declared Angela, my Sun-In blonde nemesis (who didn
’t know she was my nemesis, and, honestly, I would have been so excited if she’d wanted to hang out with me), the winner. “Aaron obviously has a crush on Angela—that’s why she won,” I seethed to myself as I threw a Yaga shirt over my Esprit tankini.

  Truth be told, Angela was prettier than me, at least by Texas standards: cute nose, a perpetual tan, and the au courant haircut—the “Rachel”—that went on to be mocked ’round the world. As for me, I had blonde curls that broke at my temples and sort of hovered above my head, like a halo of fuzz. I never “did” my hair, save the one time I did like ten braids to try to resemble the yellow-sweater-wearing version of Alanis Morissette in the “Ironic” video.

  I’d inherited my dad’s prominent snout—a nose that trickled down my nana’s bloodline and had been dubbed the “Chinsky Hook.” What young girl doesn’t dream of having a nose named for a Polish snaring device?

  This is the part of the book where you’re blessed with the realization that I had a nose job at eighteen. I’m Jewish! And no one has ever asked me about my surgery, so it was obviously a good one. But was I insecure about my nose? More than anything. I would sit in class and hide my profile because I thought it was so hideous. No one made fun of me except for one kid who called me “Rhino Nose.” (And I’ll never forget it because I had a crush on him. In hindsight, he wasn’t even that cute, which made him more attainable… and he still thought I was ugly! What a punch in the hook.) I didn’t feel ugly, though; I just knew I had an ugly nose and the universe had made a mistake.

  Now, back to the pool and back to me always knowing I’m right and that the universe is out to get me. What infuriated me was that the poolside competition wasn’t a face contest; it was supposed to be about how your body looked in a swimsuit. THOSE WERE THE RULES! NOT FACE, BODY! And yet! Right there in that Texas backyard I had my first foray into the cruel world of superficial judgments and began to understand that life wasn’t fair. (Oddly, I hadn’t fully absorbed that lesson when my parents got divorced, which didn’t faze me.)

  I don’t know where Angela is now, but I’m sure that early confirmation of her hotness has served her just fine in this life and that she’s grown up to be a wonderful nurse or receptionist or benefits administrator or whatever in fill-in-the-blank, Texas. Probably with carloads of good-looking, All-American, perpetually bronzed kids. (I just searched for her on Facebook—turns out she went to Stanford and now runs a huge charity. Wow, I totally misjudged her. Wait, aha! She does have good-looking children! SEE? I CALLED IT!)

  Thankfully, the jury-rigged bikini contest didn’t scar me too badly, and I came to believe that I was somewhere just above average on the attractiveness scale. It has since occurred to me that without the marvels of modern medical advances like acne cream and braces and surgery and Instagram filters, most of us would walk around looking like absolute she-rats all the time. Sometimes I wonder, if I were a peasant in the 1600s, what would I have looked like? Cystic acne, Chinsky Hook, and snaggleteeth running wild—I’d probably be married off to a hog farmer or perhaps hung as a witch.

  I got my aforementioned nose job right before I went to college. At first I told my friends that something had fallen on my face, and everyone believed it. This was Dallas, not Long Island. No one in my school got nose jobs, so it seemed plausible that a gigantic wooden Martha’s Vineyard “FRESH FISH HERE” sign from my parents’ living room could land on my face. Plus, we were all off to college; no one else had time to think about my nose.

  All I can tell you is that I woke up from the surgery, eyes black and blue, with a broken swollen piggy nose, so sensitive I’d cry if you touched it with your pinky. I looked in the mirror and, through my bleary eyes, realized that I’d never felt prettier or more normal. That was my standard of beauty. If you have a big nose and you keep it, that’s awesome. My point is, I didn’t like something about myself, so I changed it. I didn’t mock other girls with bumpy noses, and I never hated girls who had perfect noses. Insecurities are a personal thing: you should handle them and not project them on anyone else.

  To me, a little plastic surgery is no different from losing a little weight or changing your hair color. If tweaking one thing will help you feel better about yourself, why not do it? Just know that deciding to alter a superficial “flaw” won’t necessarily fix whatever emotional weirdness you might be holding inside about said flaw. Tons of fat people who’ve lost weight via natural means, surgery, or anything else still say they feel fat inside. Plenty of people who change their faces still don’t feel attractive. And while I don’t struggle with many self-esteem issues, there have been and will continue to be plenty of times I’ve flat-out decided, “I’m not pretty enough for that guy.” Attraction is animalistic, not merit based. And people will, either out of politeness or genuine shock, scoff at you if you say you aren’t pretty or another woman is prettier. But just because someone is more attractive than me doesn’t mean I don’t think I deserve to live. I just call ’em like I see ’em.

  I’ll admit it: I think I’m pretty now. (Some of the time, anyway. When I’m at my best, doing stand-up, I’m not pretty. In any action shots of me onstage, I’m never making a decent face or not hunched over like a Party Goblin.) But rejection always hurts, and the younger it happens to you, the more of a mark it makes. I’ll never forget being fourteen, at summer camp, and thinking this one kid was cute. We were all going to sit in a circle, and I went and sat next to him, quietly. Everyone was milling about so he got up and moved, and so I waited a few seconds and moved, too. When I sat down next to him again—again not making eye contact or saying a word—he looked at me and said, “Stop trying to sit next to me.” Like I was some hideous fart beast who kept licking him. Ever ready with a verbal quip, I snipped, “Uh, I’m not.” When he moved again, I dared not follow. Small as that was, for years afterward I felt I shouldn’t look at boys because I was offending them.

  As for me, my own self-confidence stems not just from the notion that I am a good person worthy of love and respect but that I am, well, just a tiny bit better than some people. I KNOW, I know, that’s a lofty statement—one that could easily be misread, misinterpreted, or simply make me sound like a big bitch. But honestly, it just boils down to being a decent person who does decent things.

  I hate when, in an argument between women, the conversation devolves to, “So you think you’re better than everyone?” and the other girl reflexively quacks back, “Oh my God, who, me? Noooooo, of course not!”

  If you tried that with me, the conversation would go like this.…

  THEM: “So you think you’re better than everyone?”

  ME: “No, not everyone. Just some! OK, and maybe you!”

  In a perfect world we would all have a little societal Yelp rating floating above our heads to indicate to others, right off the bat, whether we’re garbage people or not. Wouldn’t it be great if you could meet someone and immediately see their five-star review that reads, “Stacey gives to charity, adopted an animal, is a great friend, and cares for her grandma”? Then you could compare her to Todd, who has two stars but seemed so cool. You’d read, “Todd lives off his parents, deliberately gave his last girlfriend chlamydia, has a coke problem, and once Postmated a bottle of Jack because he didn’t feel like walking downstairs to 7-Eleven. Oh, and he vapes. Competitively.” Side note: between the writing and publishing of this book, a Black Mirror episode came out with a similar idea about human ratings. I just want you to know that I had it first! Five stars!

  Yup, most people are the worst. Not you, of course—you obviously have great taste and humor, not to mention you’re reading an actual book, which is more than I can say for most people. (Fine, I admit it—we tried to condense the book into five silly memes about puppies sleeping, but I felt like my message was getting lost.)

  And Work It If You Don’t Got It

  Before I won Last Comic Standing, before I accomplished something unique, nothing in my life suggested I was going to be anything special to anyone besid
es my mother, Ronnie. I wasn’t great at school—a B and C student—but my saving grace was that I really put in a solid effort, so in challenging subjects that only Stephen Hawking could understand, like Algebra 101, the teachers loved me because I tried so, so hard.

  Just kidding.

  My secret was that I spent most of my time looking like I was trying. I’d meet with the teacher, do extra credit—anything I could to show I was going through the motions of learning (but wasn’t actually learning, because, for me, MATH IS BORING AND IMPOSSIBLE).

  On tests, I lived to hear, “Oh you were so close, and I know you were struggling with this and I noticed you wrote down the right answer and then erased it, so I’ll give you half a point.”

  Success! I scratched my way to a mediocre GPA one pity-point at a time. I did the studying, I had the tutors, in middle school I cheated by storing information in my TI-83. I took the after-school brushup classes, but it wasn’t clicking. (I’m speaking about math and chemistry here; any other subject was fine. To this day, I can still recite the Middle English prologue of The Canterbury Tales.)

  But there comes a point in your academic career when you have to surrender to the fact that you just don’t—and never will—understand math. Then you have to let that cold, hard reality manifest itself in your GPA as it will.

  I knew I’d thrive if I could just move past the school thing and enter the real world, where talent and creativity matter (LOL) instead of the blind memorization of theorems and chemical equations. It would all start with college. There, they would see me for the endlessly creative and magical creature I was! I would make my art, be lauded for my humor, and shamelessly wear pajamas to class and easily gain ten pounds my freshman year… and sophomore year.… Whatever, it’s hard to make healthy choices when the FOOD IS ALWAYS IN THE DINING HALL! A 24-HOUR YOGURT BAR? ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?! WHAT KIND OF A SCRUMPTIOUS HEAVEN-HELL IS THIS!?