A few days ago, I noticed a guy in his 40s in a Honda Civic with a rear spoiler. A Honda Civic! I can't even believe they *make* rear spoilers for Civics. Isn't that the same thing as stenciling a skull on your fanny pack? You can add whatever you want to your fanny pack, but you'll never change its fundamental essence. It'll always be that unflattering belly pouch worn by people *not* trying to bring sexy back.
It's hard to believe the guy with the rear spoiler bought it for anything other than cosmetic reasons. I am told a rear spoiler is not just a car decoration, but that it has aerodynamic properties that keep the back end of the car on the ground during high speeds and hard cornering. Okay, but the dude had a car seat in the back, so how fast does he drive and how much hard cornering is he doing with a baby on board? I rest my case.
As I had just started to enjoy my smug reverie about the poor guy's vanity, it was rudely interrupted by the unwelcome thought that I'm guilty of the same thing. The frosty pink lipstick that often adorns my lips is the rear spoiler and I am the Honda Civic. Lipstick, or indeed any noticeable makeup, seems like it's for young women -- not someone who is a month away from being able to join AARP. But I like it. Wearing frosty pink lipstick makes me *feel* good. Plus, I hear it's supposed to be helpful with the hard cornering of turning 50.
I just hope frosty pink lipstick is not a gateway drug to other more obvious vanities. I hope I don't turn into the 90-year-old woman who continues to dye her hair a jarringly unnatural dark brown because she thinks her real hair will make her look old. Or the 65-year-old lady with surgically enhanced perky breasts. As a woman, trying to figure out how to be appropriately sexy in middle age can be as confusing as it was as a teenager. Instead of being "too young" to be a certain kind of sexy, the confusing obstacle is being too old. I look forward to AARP sorting it all out for me. In the meantime, I will wear my frosty pink lipstick proudly as I continue to be entertained by the middle-aged vanities of myself and others.
Thursday, October 31, 2013
Friday, October 25, 2013
A Small Bit of Parenting Genius
As a single mom, I rely on my resourcefulness, empathy, and quick thinking to navigate the tricky shoals of parenting a teenage girl. That's usually good for about five or ten minutes. After my resourcefulness, empathy, and quick thinking have been exhausted, I am not ashamed to say I reach for something more effective, such as bribery or appealing to her vanity. And when those fail, I know I can ultimately count on the biggest weapon of persuasion in my parenting arsenal -- the Judds. Yes, you read that right. My go-to badass parenting tool is the Judds, the superstar mother-daughter singing duo that dominated the country music charts in the 1980s and early 1990s.
If my daughter badgers me about something I cannot or do not want to tell her or buy for her, I bring up the Judds. If she litigates the hell out of a "no" she's received from me, I Judd it up. Specifically, I rave about how much fun it will be when *we're* on tour together like the Judds -- mother and daughter singing and touring the country in a bus as colorful as our loud costumes. She is simultaneously mesmerized and mortified by my daydream, which temporarily paralyzes her badgering tongue into silence. As an aspiring singer, she is fascinated by the idea of successfully living her dream. But as a 13-year-old girl, she is mortified at the thought that her mother -- her embarrassing mother -- could be so prominently featured in that success. For her, it's the middle-school equivalent of Apocalypse Now. The horror, the horror...
Even though I owe a debt of gratitude to the Judds, the funny thing is, I can't even name one of their many hit songs. I didn't start listening to country music until 2005, long after Naomi and Wynonna Judd stopped touring as a duo. Eight years ago, when I just couldn't bring myself to listen to progressive talk radio anymore, I started listening to a country music station instead. Hearing songs about being dumped or fired or sitting alone in a bar drinking before noon, or other typical country-song themes, was more uplifting to me than listening to the daily barrage of political and corporate bullshit going down in America.
I'm not sure how much shelf life the Judds have left as an effective parenting trick with my daughter. It's worked like magic for the past three years, but I fear its potency wears off the more I use it. When the magic is finally gone, I hope I can pull another surprising rabbit out of my parenting hat -- especially one as improbable as the Judds.
If my daughter badgers me about something I cannot or do not want to tell her or buy for her, I bring up the Judds. If she litigates the hell out of a "no" she's received from me, I Judd it up. Specifically, I rave about how much fun it will be when *we're* on tour together like the Judds -- mother and daughter singing and touring the country in a bus as colorful as our loud costumes. She is simultaneously mesmerized and mortified by my daydream, which temporarily paralyzes her badgering tongue into silence. As an aspiring singer, she is fascinated by the idea of successfully living her dream. But as a 13-year-old girl, she is mortified at the thought that her mother -- her embarrassing mother -- could be so prominently featured in that success. For her, it's the middle-school equivalent of Apocalypse Now. The horror, the horror...
Even though I owe a debt of gratitude to the Judds, the funny thing is, I can't even name one of their many hit songs. I didn't start listening to country music until 2005, long after Naomi and Wynonna Judd stopped touring as a duo. Eight years ago, when I just couldn't bring myself to listen to progressive talk radio anymore, I started listening to a country music station instead. Hearing songs about being dumped or fired or sitting alone in a bar drinking before noon, or other typical country-song themes, was more uplifting to me than listening to the daily barrage of political and corporate bullshit going down in America.
I'm not sure how much shelf life the Judds have left as an effective parenting trick with my daughter. It's worked like magic for the past three years, but I fear its potency wears off the more I use it. When the magic is finally gone, I hope I can pull another surprising rabbit out of my parenting hat -- especially one as improbable as the Judds.
Saturday, October 12, 2013
The Pickle Lady
The summer after high school, I worked at a Christmas ornament store in a small resort town in Wisconsin. Selling Christmas crap in the middle of summer is essentially the same as selling anything else that is gratuitously unneeded. The majority of our customers were middle-aged women, many of whom I suspect were shopping junkies trying to get their high on with an inexpensive hit to temporarily appease their addiction. With her milquetoast husband in tow, our typical customer would buy one or two ornaments and be on her way to the windsock store (not to be confused with the store selling windchimes). I may as well have been selling t-shirts or mugs that said, "I like to buy needless shit in my free time."
As you might imagine, it was a boring job -- the type of boring that waves a giant red flag in front of me, inducing mischief in a misguided attempt to stave off death by boredom. One of my favorite activities was spying on the Pickle Lady who worked in the deli at the supermarket next door. I was obsessed with her. Every day I would go to the deli during my lunch break and buy a pickle from her, just to see what she was wearing.
The Pickle Lady was probably in her late 40s, with white tortoise shell cat-eye glasses and a pin-curled hairdo right out of an episode of "I Love Lucy." Banishing the polyester pantsuit of the early 1980s to someone else's closet, she always wore skirts or dresses from the 1950s, including a navy A-line dress with white polka dots that I can picture even today. Her hair, makeup, and clothes were so jarringly old timey -- 25 years out of date in 1982 -- she could have been one of those historical reenactment park actors. Instead of a Revolutionary War woman demonstrating the butter churn at Sturbridge Village, she would have played the part of the greasy-spoon waitress at the 1950s Small Town America historical park. She was a living anachronism.
This is how my 13-year-old daughter sees me. I am her pickle lady, the one she delights in observing for her hopelessly unfashionable looks and manner. When she needs a laugh, she will ask me what I think certain current teen slang words mean. When I tell her I haven't heard that word used on Prairie Home Companion or Downton Abbey, so I don't know what it means, she rolls her eyes and looks at me with a mixture of bewilderment, pity, and exasperation. She doesn't understand my utter lack of giving-a-shit about maintaining an appearance of what passes for cool in middle school. When I remind her that I'm a middle-aged woman, and no, I don't want to wear skinny jeans and a lace peplum, instead of my bermuda shorts and a t-shirt, she looks at me as if I've just told her to put me on an ice floe and push me out to sea.
I find it funny that she hasn't figured out that we have different comfort zones. She has her middle-school comfort zone (surely "middle-school comfort zone" is the biggest oxymoron ever uttered), while I have my middle-aged zone of comfort that includes frosty pink lipstick, regularly dyeing the gray out of my hair, keeping my bra straps hidden at all times, and shunning skinny jeans. Although it's probably more accurate to say skinny jeans shun me.
The simple truth is, as a parent, I will never be cool, no matter what I look like or what I say. At first glance that might seem unfair or harsh, but it's really a gift. It gives you permission to live authentically, which is just Oprah-speak for dorking it up in a big way. Make sure you say "Howdy" if you bump into me at the windsock store as I go about my business living authentically. I'll be the one in the t-shirt that says, "I like to dork it up in my free time."
As you might imagine, it was a boring job -- the type of boring that waves a giant red flag in front of me, inducing mischief in a misguided attempt to stave off death by boredom. One of my favorite activities was spying on the Pickle Lady who worked in the deli at the supermarket next door. I was obsessed with her. Every day I would go to the deli during my lunch break and buy a pickle from her, just to see what she was wearing.
The Pickle Lady was probably in her late 40s, with white tortoise shell cat-eye glasses and a pin-curled hairdo right out of an episode of "I Love Lucy." Banishing the polyester pantsuit of the early 1980s to someone else's closet, she always wore skirts or dresses from the 1950s, including a navy A-line dress with white polka dots that I can picture even today. Her hair, makeup, and clothes were so jarringly old timey -- 25 years out of date in 1982 -- she could have been one of those historical reenactment park actors. Instead of a Revolutionary War woman demonstrating the butter churn at Sturbridge Village, she would have played the part of the greasy-spoon waitress at the 1950s Small Town America historical park. She was a living anachronism.
This is how my 13-year-old daughter sees me. I am her pickle lady, the one she delights in observing for her hopelessly unfashionable looks and manner. When she needs a laugh, she will ask me what I think certain current teen slang words mean. When I tell her I haven't heard that word used on Prairie Home Companion or Downton Abbey, so I don't know what it means, she rolls her eyes and looks at me with a mixture of bewilderment, pity, and exasperation. She doesn't understand my utter lack of giving-a-shit about maintaining an appearance of what passes for cool in middle school. When I remind her that I'm a middle-aged woman, and no, I don't want to wear skinny jeans and a lace peplum, instead of my bermuda shorts and a t-shirt, she looks at me as if I've just told her to put me on an ice floe and push me out to sea.
I find it funny that she hasn't figured out that we have different comfort zones. She has her middle-school comfort zone (surely "middle-school comfort zone" is the biggest oxymoron ever uttered), while I have my middle-aged zone of comfort that includes frosty pink lipstick, regularly dyeing the gray out of my hair, keeping my bra straps hidden at all times, and shunning skinny jeans. Although it's probably more accurate to say skinny jeans shun me.
The simple truth is, as a parent, I will never be cool, no matter what I look like or what I say. At first glance that might seem unfair or harsh, but it's really a gift. It gives you permission to live authentically, which is just Oprah-speak for dorking it up in a big way. Make sure you say "Howdy" if you bump into me at the windsock store as I go about my business living authentically. I'll be the one in the t-shirt that says, "I like to dork it up in my free time."
Monday, September 30, 2013
Huffing the Residue of Hopefulness
My boyfriend Frenchy has many good qualities, but the one I'm savoring today is his ability to recognize something good and stick with it, despite the hard work and the emotional ups and downs that go hand-in-hand with something about which he is so passionate. No, I'm not talking about "us." We're somewhere in the middle of our first draft, not the third major revision. After five years of blood, sweat, and tears, Frenchy got to see his creative baby come to life this past weekend.
Frenchy's musical, which he created with his two collaborators, was performed for the first time in a workshop production, a theatrical experience that is much more than a reading, but less than a full-scale production. A musical, which I've heard described as "a play on steroids," is so complicated to create, it's the theatrical version of writing a novel. It's inspiring for me to see Frenchy's diligence, creative talents, and belief in the project finally reap the reward of having other people experience it in 3D.
Frenchy is a polisher. He sees something that has potential, but is not anywhere near perfect, and he works on it until it's really good. To him, an obstacle isn't a stop sign, it's just a rough edge that needs to be reworked until you get it right. Besides being a quality I admire, Frenchy's "patient, but persistent drive to improve" seems like a good indication that he won't bolt at the first sign of relationship trouble because he's used to constantly reworking things, making little changes here and there. I like that. And I need that -- most of all for the residue of hopefulness created by all his patient, persistent polishing.
Frenchy's musical, which he created with his two collaborators, was performed for the first time in a workshop production, a theatrical experience that is much more than a reading, but less than a full-scale production. A musical, which I've heard described as "a play on steroids," is so complicated to create, it's the theatrical version of writing a novel. It's inspiring for me to see Frenchy's diligence, creative talents, and belief in the project finally reap the reward of having other people experience it in 3D.
Frenchy is a polisher. He sees something that has potential, but is not anywhere near perfect, and he works on it until it's really good. To him, an obstacle isn't a stop sign, it's just a rough edge that needs to be reworked until you get it right. Besides being a quality I admire, Frenchy's "patient, but persistent drive to improve" seems like a good indication that he won't bolt at the first sign of relationship trouble because he's used to constantly reworking things, making little changes here and there. I like that. And I need that -- most of all for the residue of hopefulness created by all his patient, persistent polishing.
Saturday, September 28, 2013
The Gilligan's Island of My Mind
I do not like waiting around for something to happen. Like most people, I want action. I want progress. I want efficiency. This is one of the reasons why online dating was so uncomfortable for me. And jury duty, which occupied my time recently.
Most of my day was spent waiting -- first for several hours in the jury service waiting room, then outside of a courtroom for a couple of hours. The waiting was so interminably long, I lost interest in reading and my mind started to play "Desert Island," this silly game I play whenever I'm stuck with a group of strangers for a while. The game is based on the farfetched idea that I and this particular group of strangers would have to reestablish some sort of civilization after surviving a catastrophic event that isolates us from the rest of what's left of humanity. Sort of like Gilligan's Island, but in the middle of LA.
I scan all the men in the group to try to figure out who would be my "husband" on Desert Island. The pickings are as slim as they were for Mary Ann and Ginger on Gilligan's Island. There's an olive-skinned foreign guy in his 30s sitting in the corner with his eyes closed, slowly swaying his head side to side, as he sings what can only be a funeral dirge in the land of his birth. This is America, babe. There is a time and place that is not now or here for that. Shut the f#ck up.
There are a dozen older men dressed in the standard retiree uniform of nondescript wire-framed glasses, a pastel-colored polo shirt, big-ass running shoes (usually white), and a pair of khakis two sizes too big. Bill Gates is not a fashion icon. Quit cloning his look. Well, unless you're *trying* to make yourself unattractive. Then, by all means, go ahead.
And then there's the chatty guy working the crowd with his well meant, but benignly insipid cliches belly-flopping out of his mouth every other sentence. He's in his late 50s, I would guess, and strikes me as the kind of guy who retires and becomes "The Waver" in his town. You know, that generically friendly, but inscrutable odd guy who stands on the same corner every day at the same time, robotically waving at the commuters driving to their boring jobs. That's his hobby -- waving at strangers. This guy gives me that same "what's-your-deal?" vibe.
It's surprisingly hard to "win" at Desert Island, and I more often end up in a draw, as I did a couple days ago when I gave up trying to find an adequate Desert Island husband within the juror pool. Instead, I looked around at the women among the prospective jurors, and decided I would be better off forming a platonic, supportive group with some of them, instead of trying to pair off with any of the guys.
Coincidentally, this echoes some recent conversations I've had with a few female friends, who have been thinking about what retirement will look like for them in 15 or 20 years. Some of my friends -- many of whom are single by circumstance, not choice -- extrapolate their current situation into the future and toy with the idea of living with, or very near, a group of their closest female friends when they finally retire. And even some of my married female friends joke about retiring within the immediate proximity of a circle of supportive, fun, and lively women, picturing themselves living in a women's-only dorm for retirees.
I'm not really sure what this means. At face value, it may mean single women in middle age have come to the realization that they may not ever meet Mr. (or Miss) Right, so if retirement with a romantic partner is not in the cards, what's an acceptable alternative to retiring alone? Or it may mean that middle-aged women are recognizing the increasingly important emotional support role of their female friends as they age. One thing I *am* sure of is that retirement with a guy like "The Waver" would be as unacceptable as Ginger or Mary Ann settling for Gilligan.
Most of my day was spent waiting -- first for several hours in the jury service waiting room, then outside of a courtroom for a couple of hours. The waiting was so interminably long, I lost interest in reading and my mind started to play "Desert Island," this silly game I play whenever I'm stuck with a group of strangers for a while. The game is based on the farfetched idea that I and this particular group of strangers would have to reestablish some sort of civilization after surviving a catastrophic event that isolates us from the rest of what's left of humanity. Sort of like Gilligan's Island, but in the middle of LA.
I scan all the men in the group to try to figure out who would be my "husband" on Desert Island. The pickings are as slim as they were for Mary Ann and Ginger on Gilligan's Island. There's an olive-skinned foreign guy in his 30s sitting in the corner with his eyes closed, slowly swaying his head side to side, as he sings what can only be a funeral dirge in the land of his birth. This is America, babe. There is a time and place that is not now or here for that. Shut the f#ck up.
There are a dozen older men dressed in the standard retiree uniform of nondescript wire-framed glasses, a pastel-colored polo shirt, big-ass running shoes (usually white), and a pair of khakis two sizes too big. Bill Gates is not a fashion icon. Quit cloning his look. Well, unless you're *trying* to make yourself unattractive. Then, by all means, go ahead.
And then there's the chatty guy working the crowd with his well meant, but benignly insipid cliches belly-flopping out of his mouth every other sentence. He's in his late 50s, I would guess, and strikes me as the kind of guy who retires and becomes "The Waver" in his town. You know, that generically friendly, but inscrutable odd guy who stands on the same corner every day at the same time, robotically waving at the commuters driving to their boring jobs. That's his hobby -- waving at strangers. This guy gives me that same "what's-your-deal?" vibe.
It's surprisingly hard to "win" at Desert Island, and I more often end up in a draw, as I did a couple days ago when I gave up trying to find an adequate Desert Island husband within the juror pool. Instead, I looked around at the women among the prospective jurors, and decided I would be better off forming a platonic, supportive group with some of them, instead of trying to pair off with any of the guys.
Coincidentally, this echoes some recent conversations I've had with a few female friends, who have been thinking about what retirement will look like for them in 15 or 20 years. Some of my friends -- many of whom are single by circumstance, not choice -- extrapolate their current situation into the future and toy with the idea of living with, or very near, a group of their closest female friends when they finally retire. And even some of my married female friends joke about retiring within the immediate proximity of a circle of supportive, fun, and lively women, picturing themselves living in a women's-only dorm for retirees.
I'm not really sure what this means. At face value, it may mean single women in middle age have come to the realization that they may not ever meet Mr. (or Miss) Right, so if retirement with a romantic partner is not in the cards, what's an acceptable alternative to retiring alone? Or it may mean that middle-aged women are recognizing the increasingly important emotional support role of their female friends as they age. One thing I *am* sure of is that retirement with a guy like "The Waver" would be as unacceptable as Ginger or Mary Ann settling for Gilligan.
Sunday, September 22, 2013
Cruel Joke
"Smoking hot beauty is nature's way of making sure boring people get laid too. The rest of us have to be interesting," Mark Twain once wrote. Well, not really. *I* wrote that in a sardonic fit of dating pique once, and it's a joke I've made many times since.
I have this bias regarding insanely hot guys -- a bias I've held since midway through college. Hot guys have no personality. I am not referring to good-looking guys. I've known many good-looking guys with interesting minds and great personalities, and have even had the luck to date a few of them. I mean that infinitesimally small percentage of guys who are so damn hot, they never have to go out of their way to meet anyone. People just flock to the hot guy. So he's never really had to develop his personality in an interesting way. I'm talking about you, Brad Pitts of the world.
The hot guy is one of the Universe's favorite cruel jokes on us mere mortals. What could be funnier than a guy with an exquisitely perfect exterior, and a perfectly hollow interior? Before I realized the Universe was f*cking with me, I would develop a crush on some hot guy, preoccupy myself with clumsy machinations to loiter in his celestial orbit, then wait for him to notice me. After a string of failed attempts to grab his attention, my eager interest in the hot guy would turn to derogation, marinated by the sour grapes of his obvious disinterest in me. Half of my two-pronged strategy to get over Hot Crush would involve really focusing on his personality, not his abs. Perfect on the outside, Hot Crush was almost always disappointingly ordinary on the inside -- an Adonis with a doughy couch-potato brain. The other half of my "recovery" was falling for some other smoking hot guy. D'oh!
Physical beauty is a deceptive, tricky thing. When it comes to finding lasting love, there is nothing so over-hyped in value as beauty. It's not a particularly valuable asset, so much as it is a drug -- an intoxicating one that can distort your perception of others and yourself. Beauty is the fun-house mirror of dating. You can't trust it as a credible representation of reality, but it's hard not to pause and stare a while, mouth agape as your drool puddles below.
I have this bias regarding insanely hot guys -- a bias I've held since midway through college. Hot guys have no personality. I am not referring to good-looking guys. I've known many good-looking guys with interesting minds and great personalities, and have even had the luck to date a few of them. I mean that infinitesimally small percentage of guys who are so damn hot, they never have to go out of their way to meet anyone. People just flock to the hot guy. So he's never really had to develop his personality in an interesting way. I'm talking about you, Brad Pitts of the world.
The hot guy is one of the Universe's favorite cruel jokes on us mere mortals. What could be funnier than a guy with an exquisitely perfect exterior, and a perfectly hollow interior? Before I realized the Universe was f*cking with me, I would develop a crush on some hot guy, preoccupy myself with clumsy machinations to loiter in his celestial orbit, then wait for him to notice me. After a string of failed attempts to grab his attention, my eager interest in the hot guy would turn to derogation, marinated by the sour grapes of his obvious disinterest in me. Half of my two-pronged strategy to get over Hot Crush would involve really focusing on his personality, not his abs. Perfect on the outside, Hot Crush was almost always disappointingly ordinary on the inside -- an Adonis with a doughy couch-potato brain. The other half of my "recovery" was falling for some other smoking hot guy. D'oh!
Physical beauty is a deceptive, tricky thing. When it comes to finding lasting love, there is nothing so over-hyped in value as beauty. It's not a particularly valuable asset, so much as it is a drug -- an intoxicating one that can distort your perception of others and yourself. Beauty is the fun-house mirror of dating. You can't trust it as a credible representation of reality, but it's hard not to pause and stare a while, mouth agape as your drool puddles below.
Tuesday, September 10, 2013
My Elusive, Fickle Friend
Confidence is to dating, what fire is to camping. Without a nice roaring campfire, you're just eating shitty food outdoors and sleeping on the ground. But with too much fire, you're cutting your vacation short because a wildfire is raging out of control. When you're dating, you must have *some* confidence, but not in excessive amounts. After all, if you can't sell yourself *to* yourself, how are you going to sell yourself to a near stranger you met online and are now meeting for the first time? Can there possibly be a more unreasonable time to expect self-confidence in a person than in the immediate aftermath of a life-changing breakup?
I have always found confidence to be so elusive, so fickle. Confidence is like that brilliant, beautiful, and utterly captivating friend -- the life of the party, the one everyone else is so eager to claim as their pal. She's so vivacious and energizing to be around, but you can never really count on her, because you can never be sure when she'll show up. Some days, confidence slums with me as I go about my daily life. Other days, confidence is whispering in Taylor Swift's ear that she has interesting things to say in a song, even though she's only 23.
Yeah, that pretty much sums up my relationship with confidence.
When I was in my mid-20s, I worked at a newspaper that exclusively covered horse racing, which has always been a very male-dominated sport. One of my coworkers was a woman about a dozen years older than me who was very knowledgeable in a specific area of horse racing, and in fact, held some rather unconventional views on that subject. I felt an immediate bond with her, because she was an expert in the same area that had first captured my obsessive interest in horse racing. I marveled at her ability to unequivocally state her opinion and then back it up with her exhaustive knowledge on the subject. She did not qualify her opinions with hedging statements, nor did she even slightly budge from what she said when she was challenged by male coworkers. She startled me with the self-assured way she expressed herself. She was the first women I admired for her confidence.
Every time she got into a discussion with a coworker about her area of expertise, I observed her as if she were a wild baby animal wandering through my backyard or a celebrity getting a latte at Starbucks. I was intrigued by the mystery of how she came to possess such unwavering, but fully warranted, confidence. By default, I chalked it up to her hard work and observational brilliance, but I knew there had to be something else in the mix that I just hadn't considered. Months later I got my answer, when I, along with the entire office, was surprised to find out that she was transgendered. She had made the gender switch to female years before when she was a young adult, after having been born and raised as a boy.
So, *that* was the missing penis-shaped piece of the puzzle. F*ck! Of course! The key to having unwavering self-confidence is to be born and raised as a male. It was a rueful tongue-in-cheek life lesson I've never forgotten.
Since then, I've met many other women I admire for their confidence. I've come to realize that confidence seems to manifest itself differently in women than men. Maybe I didn't admire a woman for her confidence until I was 27 years old because I didn't *recognize* it when I saw it. Women's confidence is usually quieter, and it's often less emotional than male confidence. (Unless it's confidence about physical appearance, in which case, both women and men are neurotic emotional wrecks.) And women's confidence always comes -- always -- after a lot of hard work, the paying-your-dues kind of work that takes years.
All of this is not to imply that men have it easy when it comes to confidence either. Confidence is elusive to many people of both sexes, often as maddeningly elusive as the middle-aged lifelong bachelor or a parking space at Costco the day before Thanksgiving. Since it's essential for success in so many areas, I will continue to woo my elusive, fickle friend back into my life on a more regular basis. Maybe we'll just be Facebook friends. Maybe she'll come over to my place once a week for coffee. Or maybe, just maybe, I will ignore my needy desire for confidence and just plod ahead one step at a time until my elusive, fickle friend automatically just starts showing up every day for a quiet walk together.
I have always found confidence to be so elusive, so fickle. Confidence is like that brilliant, beautiful, and utterly captivating friend -- the life of the party, the one everyone else is so eager to claim as their pal. She's so vivacious and energizing to be around, but you can never really count on her, because you can never be sure when she'll show up. Some days, confidence slums with me as I go about my daily life. Other days, confidence is whispering in Taylor Swift's ear that she has interesting things to say in a song, even though she's only 23.
Yeah, that pretty much sums up my relationship with confidence.
When I was in my mid-20s, I worked at a newspaper that exclusively covered horse racing, which has always been a very male-dominated sport. One of my coworkers was a woman about a dozen years older than me who was very knowledgeable in a specific area of horse racing, and in fact, held some rather unconventional views on that subject. I felt an immediate bond with her, because she was an expert in the same area that had first captured my obsessive interest in horse racing. I marveled at her ability to unequivocally state her opinion and then back it up with her exhaustive knowledge on the subject. She did not qualify her opinions with hedging statements, nor did she even slightly budge from what she said when she was challenged by male coworkers. She startled me with the self-assured way she expressed herself. She was the first women I admired for her confidence.
Every time she got into a discussion with a coworker about her area of expertise, I observed her as if she were a wild baby animal wandering through my backyard or a celebrity getting a latte at Starbucks. I was intrigued by the mystery of how she came to possess such unwavering, but fully warranted, confidence. By default, I chalked it up to her hard work and observational brilliance, but I knew there had to be something else in the mix that I just hadn't considered. Months later I got my answer, when I, along with the entire office, was surprised to find out that she was transgendered. She had made the gender switch to female years before when she was a young adult, after having been born and raised as a boy.
So, *that* was the missing penis-shaped piece of the puzzle. F*ck! Of course! The key to having unwavering self-confidence is to be born and raised as a male. It was a rueful tongue-in-cheek life lesson I've never forgotten.
Since then, I've met many other women I admire for their confidence. I've come to realize that confidence seems to manifest itself differently in women than men. Maybe I didn't admire a woman for her confidence until I was 27 years old because I didn't *recognize* it when I saw it. Women's confidence is usually quieter, and it's often less emotional than male confidence. (Unless it's confidence about physical appearance, in which case, both women and men are neurotic emotional wrecks.) And women's confidence always comes -- always -- after a lot of hard work, the paying-your-dues kind of work that takes years.
All of this is not to imply that men have it easy when it comes to confidence either. Confidence is elusive to many people of both sexes, often as maddeningly elusive as the middle-aged lifelong bachelor or a parking space at Costco the day before Thanksgiving. Since it's essential for success in so many areas, I will continue to woo my elusive, fickle friend back into my life on a more regular basis. Maybe we'll just be Facebook friends. Maybe she'll come over to my place once a week for coffee. Or maybe, just maybe, I will ignore my needy desire for confidence and just plod ahead one step at a time until my elusive, fickle friend automatically just starts showing up every day for a quiet walk together.
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