How to Be a Girl 101: The Trip to Ulta

As I walked out of the house, I hollered, “K, bye, going to Sephora to get all my fancy lady supplies” and my husband called back, “I think it’s Ulta you want. Sephora is just perfume.” So I was off to a good start.

I’ve recently been trying to FEEL myself again-powerful, confident and sexy. It’s been two years of COVID and kids and healing from a nasty boob surgery that was supposed to make all of my dreams come true but didn’t. I’m not working in my usual profession and I moved somewhere where I know no one. I spend a lot of time alone in my head, which is a mixed bag. My identity is upside down. I look in the mirror and don’t even recognize the furry, ancient, chubby woman covered in scars, looking back.

The last time I got fancy it took a professional 2 HOURS to make my face look like a better version of my face.

Some of this leaving myself alone to look however I look was deliberate. I was challenging social norms and bucking the oppressive systems telling me my only value is in how I look and there’s only one (thin, young, hairless) way to look- so I went thick, old, and hairy. Plus, even at my “prime,” I never really fit the ideal- I’m too tall, too big, so even when I’m making myself miserable to try to achieve the goal body, it’s never really there (I think the secret is IT’S NEVER…