superstar girls

I will never be one. I do it in my own way, but I will never truly be one. You know, the ones who always look amazing. The ones whose kids are always well-behaved. The ones whose hair is always perfect, whose husband is cute and sweet, and whose house is well decorated. The ones who put the almost unnoticed final touches on things. They are the ones that are still beautiful despite their imperfections. They are the REAL popular girls. The cool kids of adulthood.

Today my inadequacies were lifted up in the small form of a beautiful, iridescent orange ribbon. A magazine was left on my desk with an article marked for my perusal. Instead of the post-it that I would have left, instead of a dog-eared page or a smashed-open spine, there was a magical, shimmery, orange ribbon marking the spot. Left in such a casual way that it just happened to be within arm's length when the reader decided to send it my way. But left in such a way that it is clearly an intentional inclusion of loveliness and speciality into the day. It was charming. I loved it.

But even as I loved it, I wondered why I didn't choose to add a certain finesse to similar, unimportant things. Then social conditioning around gender caught up to me; I began to ponder my failures as a Southern woman. How did I not learn this? Why isn't this an innate quality?

Even though I don't have special scrap ribbons for packages and letters, I try to bring my own je ne sais quoi to life. I cry with friends, am an unabashedly loud singer, ask hard questions, and refuse to accept the status quo. It may not be glamorous, but that's me.