Not that I was doubting. However, I've been a little disconcerted for some time now. Let me explain.
When I was young, I thought being a woman meant lipstick and sending kids to bed and wearing dresses with shoulder pads (it was the 90s, so it was acceptable). Then the great state of Utah forced me to take health class in the seventh grade, and I realized that being a woman meant being a Woman. How else can you explain it?
But after moving away to college-land and living in the midst of thousands of young, twenty-something females, I realized that there are EIGHT essential aspects of being a woman:
1) You have to love vintage. And vintage shopping. And cleaning out your grandma's closet.
2) You must own a blog.
3) You must love taking pictures with your way-too-expensive-for-your-amateur-photo-skills camera. Also, you have a special talent for photoshopping said pictures to look vintagey.
4) You have to prepare food that is not only tasty, but is also so cute that you'd trade a baby for it. And since meat can never be made to look cute, you are probably a borderline vegetarian. Or flexitarian, depending on if you can make
heart-shaped hard-boiled eggs.
5) You have to serve this food at cute dinner parties decorated vintage-style, and then take artsy pictures of the food and post it on your blog. But then all your friends have to leave comments on your blog saying how skilled you are and how jealous they are of you, or else it simply doesn't count.
6) Then you have to pin all of it on Pinterest. Also, as a woman, you are totally addicted to Pinterest, especially all the pictures of inspirational little sayings written in cute fonts. Which you realize are simply words, but for some reason, writing "Believe in Yourself" in a
cute font suddenly makes it infinitely more
meaningful and
important than when it's written in Arial or Helvetica.
7) You must absolutely adore either
The Help or
The Hunger Games. I used to think it was the Twilight Series, but then I think most everyone realized how silly it is to say, "You better hold on tight, spider monkey," and simultaneously left their Twilight books in dumpsters, their little sisters' hands, and old thrift stores (so that years from now, their vintage-loving children can buy them again).
8) You have to love jogging. Or maybe you hate it. But either way, you have to take your ipod and go every morning so you can jog by every other woman and wonder what they look at on Pinterest and when was the last time they went vintage shopping and how cute are their homemade cupcakes. Because you have to. Because you're a woman.
After discovering and noting these Eight Essential Traits of Being a Woman, I found myself facing a problem: I don't think I'm a woman. Yes, according to the scarring memories of seventh-grade health class, I am, in fact, a woman. But if I were to take a quiz or a class called "How to be a Woman," I would probably fail miserably and be punished to remain in androgynous Limbo forever.
For a while, I thought my one redeeming quality, to just barely tip me back into the realm of womanhood, was my blog. But I don't post cute pictures of anything really, in fact, my last few pictures were of "
attack bars" and a
shabbily-fashioned pictured of Bruno Mars with lighters falling from the sky. And my video from
The Karate Kid and link to
professional owl pellet vendors (still laughing about that one) aren't exactly cute vintage material. Although I think owl pellets, by a stretch of the imagination, can be considered vintage.
Anyway, my whole point was that until tonight, I did not know that I was a woman. Just a few hours ago, I proved it to myself.
No, I didn't bake cute food or take pictures of it or get compliments for wearing my grandmother's dress.
I went jogging.
Which is shocking if you know me because I've had asthma forever and I'd rather go cycling anyday and I generally think running is useless (unless you are running from a bear or the fuzz or a bad date, in which case it is very helpful). But I didn't go in the morning, and I didn't take my ipod. Instead I went at 12:30 am on a Saturday night... Does this still count?
Even if it doesn't, I think it
should count for something. I actually enjoyed it, but mainly because it was only two miles and I was jogging to a friend's house (a friend who is kind enough to host a sweaty runner after midnight... weird, I know).
Anyway, I've decided a few things from my jogging experience: first, I
am a woman. Second, the reason why I appear to be a woman in some ways and trick people into thinking I am a woman in other ways is simply because I am a ninja woman. This also explains why I jog
at night. And third, I wouldn't advise going jogging at night, because then you'll still be on a runner's high at 2:30 am, and there is usually nothing to do at 2:30 am except to
CLEAN ALL THE THINGS.
