Bossypants Part 8

I spent most of 1990 bargaining with G.o.d that I would take one gigantic lifelong back zit in exchange for clear skin on my face. While this never worked out, I do not at all regret the time I spent pursuing it. It's about the journey, people.5) The Eyes Are the Windows to Where the Soul Is Supposed to Be

I taught Monica Lewinsky everything she knows... about eye cream. I guess I should back up and explain that. In the spring of 1999, I partic.i.p.ated in a secret meeting with Monica Lewinsky, SNLproducer Marci Klein, and fellow SNL writer Paula Pell. Marci called and asked how quickly Paula and I could get down to her Tribeca apartment. Monica Lewinsky was coming over and we three were going to convince her to appear on SNL. This was before Ms. Lewinsky's infamous Barbara Walters interview aired. None of us had even heard her speak before. She was still that enigmatic girl in the beret who didn't get to the dry cleaners very often.

We spent the afternoon drinking wine and eating wasabi peas. (We didn't even buy the girl lunch! Who did we think we were, presidents?) Monica was bright and personable and very open with us-maybe too open for a person in her situation. I'm just saying, Linda Tripp might not have been the intelligence-gathering mastermind you thought she was.

We talked about thongs, Weight Watchers, and Brazilian bikini waxes. (But you probably knew all that when I said it was 1999.) When the topic turned to eye cream, I wanted to talk, so I shared the one piece of information I'd retained from the mean woman at the La Mer counter in Saks. "You're supposed to gently pat it on with your ring finger." I demonstrated. "Oh, really?" Monica asked with a level of interest and gullibility that explained a lot. To this day, I think of Monica whenever I apply my eye cream. And I'm sure she thinks of me.6) s.p.a.ce Lasers

As you age, you may want to pay someone to shoot lasers at your face. If you are a fancy lady and live in a fancy urban center like New York or DallasFort Worth, you go to a fancy dermatologist and they cover your eyes and point various machines at your face to "promote collagen production." If you live far from a city, you can simulate the experience at home by having a friend hide your wallet while you sit close to a s.p.a.ce heater. It will work just as well.

For a while I was getting my "laser money removal" done by a fancy doctor on Park Avenue. One day I went to see about some hormonal acne that wouldn't go away on my jawline. The doctor eagerly injected the spot with steroids, and within a day or two the blemish had shrunk down to normal.Unfortunately, the steroids caused the spot to keep shrinking, and by the end of the week I had a divot in my jaw through which I could feel the bone. I was furious and complaining about it in the makeup chair at SNL. "My face is already pretty banged up and now I have another scar to deal with?!" Amy Poehler called to me from across the room, "The difference is... now you're paying for it." She was right.I really had made it. We high-fived about it later.7) "A Woman's Hair Is Her Crowning Glory"-the guys who wrote the Bible

Beauty experts in the 1970s declared the s.h.a.g the "most universally flattering haircut." The short layers in the front framed the face while irregular longer pieces in the back elongated the neck. I think this picture proves them right.

Finding a hairstylist you trust is key. For many years I worked exclusively with the students at the Gordon Phillips Beauty Academy. The sign out front said it all-"Gordon Phillips Beauty Academy, London, Paris, Upper Darby." Always on the cutting edge of beauty, I believe this haircut was executed by folding my face in half and cutting out a heart. Of course I must be honest; this is clearly a professional photo taken on "picture day." I didn't look this sleek and pulled together all the time.8) Q: But Tina, Most of Us Don't Have Constant Access to a Hairstylist. What DoWe Do?

A: First of All, Don't Speak to Me in That Tone. Second of All, You Must Learn to Tame Your Own Mane!

I first found a system that worked for me in the mid-eighties. Once or twice a week I would set my alarm for six A.M. so I could get up and plug in the Hot Stix. Hot Stix were heated rubber sticks, and you would twist your hair around them and roll it up. After about fifteen minutes, you took all the sticks out, and your hair was curled up in tight rings (with dry raggedy ends). I would study the curls in the mirror, impressed with both the appliance and my newfound ability to use it.

Then, without fail, at the last second before leaving for school, I would ask myself, "Am I supposed to brush it out or leave it?" Why could I never remember? That feeling of "I'm pretty sure this next step is wrong, but I'm just gonna do it anyway" is part of the same set of instincts that makes me such a great cook.

On some level I knew I wasn't supposed to brush it out, but I couldn't stop myself.

My hand-gripping the brush like it was a hand transplant from a murderer who hated beauty!-brushed through the curls, turning them into a giant static-filled mess. By the end of homeroom it was pulled into a ponytail, which really works on me, so there you have it.

Right after I graduated high school I decided to cut my hair off. This was my chance to reinvent myself before college.

After a harsh disagreement over the ideational hollowness of sausage curls, my mother and I had ended our artistic experiment with the Gordon Phillips Academy. We were now getting our hair cut by my cla.s.smate's mom, who was also a professional Ann Jillian look-alike. Yes, the feeling you're experiencing right now is jealousy. The whole family was glamorous that way. I always envied their lives because they seemed like they were living in a sitcom. They were all blond and good-looking. The mom cut hair out of her bas.e.m.e.nt salon and Ann Jillianed part-time. You could sell this show to CBS just with that! The dad ran a restaurant. Their uncle was our school's "cool" English teacher. The oldest son was a young Bon Jovi type who was the star of our high school choir and went all the way to New York once a week for private hard-rock vocal coaching. The middle son was a brilliant, funny, cuddly giant who drew sardonic cartoons in the margins of things, and the baby of the family was the Jason Priestleylevel adorable kid who, clearly, the producers of the family had added in the last season to boost ratings. I mean, just looking at this family, you knew they were going to make it to syndication.

It was natural that I would trust Mrs. Doyle to transform me into my new college self. I wanted to cut it all off. Not the coward's move, not a bob: the full choppery. Mrs. Doyle put my hair into a thick ponytail, cut that ponytail off, and handed it to me. I still have it somewhere in a cardboard box in my parents' house. I know because my mom has been politely asking me to "maybe spend an hour going through those boxes" for over twenty years now.

The haircut was cropped close on the sides, fuller on top, with two long Liza Minnelliesque wisps that hung down like peyes. I loved it. Then I asked whether we needed the wisps, but once it was explained to me that they were mandatory, I went back to loving it.

Nerd no more, this new cut let people see the real me that was inside-a mother of four who was somehow also a virgin.9) When It Comes to Fas.h.i.+on, Find What Works for You and Stick with It

A wise friend once told me, "Don't wear what fas.h.i.+on designers tell you to wear. Wear what they wear." His point being that most designers, no matter what they throw onto the runway, favor simple, flattering pieces for themselves.

Anyone who has never met me can tell you that fas.h.i.+on has always been very very very very very very very important to me. For example, I once told my cousin that my dream would be "if the whole store Express was my closet!" How prescient, because now, of course, I wear nothing but Express.

It can't be said enough. Don't concern yourself with fas.h.i.+on; stick to simple pieces that flatter your body type.

By nineteen, I had found my look. Oversize T-s.h.i.+rts, bike shorts, and wrestling shoes. To prevent the silhouette from being too baggy, I would cinch it at the waist with my f.a.n.n.y pack. I was pretty sure I would wear this look forever. The s.h.i.+rts allowed me to express myself with cool sayings like "There's No Crying in Baseball" and "Universitat Heidelberg," the bike shorts showed off my muscular legs, and the f.a.n.n.y pack held all my trolley tokens. I was nailing it on a daily basis. Find something like this for yourself as soon as possible.10) A Manicure Is a Must

Once I moved to New York in 1997, I discovered the joys of the quickie Korean manicure. The city is filled with tiny storefront nail salons where you can get a manicure-pedicure, an underarm wax, and a ten-minute series of punches in the back, all for under a hundred dollars. The first few times you go, it can be intimidating. For starters, you may forget that you yourself speak English. You enter, smile, and nod at the manager. "Manicure-pedicure?" "Pick color," she chirps back in her Korean accent. You pick out a couple of the three hundred shades of off-white. "This for manicure. This feet. Magazine okay?" Why are you talking like that? Now that you've racially embarra.s.sed yourself, you are ready to squeeze into a seat at a tiny table and basically hold hands with a stranger for twenty minutes. That really is the craziest thing the first few times you go, getting used to pa.s.sively flopping your hands into another woman's hands. It's like something they'd make you do at summer camp as a trust-building exercise, I a.s.sume. I never went to summer camp, as I was neither underprivileged nor Jewish nor extremely Christian, nor obese. (It would be a great exercise for someone who thinks they want to move to New York. Sit in an enclosed s.p.a.ce full of fumes and hold hands with a stranger for twenty minutes while everyone around you speaks a language you don't understand. If you enjoy this, you will enjoy the 6 train.)

To take your mind off how weird it is to have someone else clean your fingers, there is a series of theatrical performances all around you. To your right you might find a New Yorker speaking animatedly about an apartment she has seen. "It was sick. You don't even know. Marble slabs." The more New Yorkers like something, the more disgusted they are. "The kitchen was all Sub-Zero: I want to kill myself. The building has a playroom that makes you want to break your own jaw with a golf club. I can't take it." To your left may sit an older woman eating cashews with one hand while talking on the phone with the other while still receiving a manicure and oversharing. "I know. I was crying about it on the toilet this morning-*to manicurist+ don't cut the cuticles, please." As you listen closer, you will suspect that she is partic.i.p.ating in a paid therapy session over the phone. "Well, you know, it's about setting boundaries. He has to be told, 'If we're gonna have these conversations it shouldn't be when one of us is drunk and the other one is hanging upside down in the gravity boots.' " As you listen longer, you're not sure if she's the patient or the therapist. "Do I think it's good that you're angry? Why would I think it's good that you're angry?" There are never fewer than eight Tracey Ullman characters in any NYC nail salon at any given time.

If all this becomes too much for you, just look up and focus on the poster of a hand with long red nails holding a violin incorrectly.

Before you know it, your manicure is done and looking great. Your fingernails look healthy and fresh, and the s.h.i.+ny varnish will help hide the little particles of garbage and human feces that all city dwellers are slightly covered in!11) Aging Naturally Without Looking Like Time-Lapse Photography of aRotting Sparrow

At a certain point your body wants to be disgusting. While your teens and twenties were about identifying and emphasizing your "best features," your late thirties and forties are about fighting back decay. You pluck your patchy beard daily. Your big toe may start to turn jauntily inward. Overnight you may grow one long straight white pubic hair. Not that this has happened to me, of course, because every six months I get a very expensive j.a.panese treatment that turns my pubic hair clear like rice noodles.

We all mentally prepare ourselves for wrinkles, but wrinkles are not the problem. It's the unexpected grosseries.

For example, your mouth. Dear G.o.d, your mouth. No matter how diligent you are about brus.h.i.+ng and flossing-which is never diligent enough for that show-off dental hygienist of yours-at some point you start waking up every day with a mouth that smells like a snail left in the sun. You can fix it as soon as you get up-you brush and use mouthwash-but there's something about knowing you woke up with hot-mothball mouth that makes you feel old.

I think G.o.d designed our mouths to die first to help us slowly transition to the grave. But I am a big believer in "Intelligent Design," and by that I mean I love IKEA!12) The Most Important Rule of Beauty

If you retain nothing else, always remember the most important Rule of Beauty. "Who cares?"

Remembrances of Being Very Very Skinny

For a brief time at the turn of the century, I was very skinny. This is what I remember about that period.

I was cold all the time.

I had a pair of size-four corduroy short shorts. That I wore. To work. In the middle of Manhattan.

I loved it when people told me I was getting too thin.

I once took a bag of sliced red peppers to the beach as a snack.

I regularly ate health food cookies so disgusting that when I enthusiastically gave one to Rachel Dratch she drew a picture of a rabbit and broke the cookie into a trail of tiny pieces coming out of the rabbit's b.u.t.t.

Men I had met before suddenly paid attention to me... and I hated them for it.

Sometimes I had to sleep with a pillow between my legs because my bony knees clanking together kept me awake.

I had a lot of time on my hands because I wasn't constantly eating.

I ran three miles a day on a treadmill six days a week.

I felt wonderfully superior to everyone.

I didn't have a kid yet.

We should leave people alone about their weight. Being skinny for a while (provided you actually eat food and don't take pills or smoke to get there) is a perfectly fine pastime. Everyone should try it once, like a super-short haircut or dating a white guy.

Remembrances of Being a Little Bit Fat

For a brief time at the end of that last century I was overweight. This is what I remember about that period.