I’ve always made a bad girl.

I don’t mean to say that I’m bad. I’m far too responsible for that. I listen to NPR. I vote in primaries. But when it comes to femininity, to the trappings of girlhood (the shoes, the makeup, the cooking, the arcane household crafts), I just do not get it. I am not good at it. I fail to perform “girl” correctly.

It’s not as if I haven’t been trained for the job. Throughout my childhood, several family members staged interventions and crash courses on femininity, from the grandmother who told me that I could be so pretty, if only I’d try a little, to the cousins who told me that ya cain’t use big words on a guy, or he won’t like ya. My father – a check-bouncing, hard-drinking, waitress-dating guy who rode motorcycles and used the word f*ck approximately eight times in any given conversation – despaired over my failure to become, in his words, “a real lady.”

I tried. I really did. Before I knew what feminism was, I studied gender, the assumptions and behaviors and roles that were assigned to the men and women around me. I didn’t have revolutionary aims. I just wanted to know what I was missing.

This is what I picked up:

Boys are strong. Girls are gentle. Boys are brave. Girls are patient. Boys want to have fun. Girls want to have babies. Boys are attractive because of what they do. Girls are attractive because of how they look. Boys smoke, drink, and screw. Girls cook, clean, and marry. Boys pick the girls they want. Girls take the boys who pick them. Boys can’t help themselves. Girls spend their time helping.

To borrow a phrase from my dear father: f*ck that sh*t. Read More »

Every morning I wake up to the Daily Candy newsletter in my inbox. Usually I quickly scan through whatever new hip or trendy information it dispenses, but don’t really take too much from it. That all changed the other day when I read about a new website called usedcardboardboxes.com.

After four years of moving my whole life in and out of dorms and apartments every few months, I became a pro at packing and unpacking. Yet, I always seemed to reach a point towards the end where I would just throw clothes and shoes in a garbage bag and throw it in my car. Needless to say, it was not the most organized way to pack.

If only I had known about this website where you can preorder a moving kit that includes, medium, large, and XL boxes, packing tape, packing paper, sharpies, and a box cutter. You can also choose the size of the kit depending on where you are moving from or to. Whether it’s a dorm or a six bedroom apt, they’ve got you covered.

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