Girl.

On the dining room table of my brother's apartment lay, Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns) by Mindy Kaling, writer on The Office and star of The Mindy Project.  While my brother was taking a shower, or getting ready, or something - or maybe his girlfriend had grabbed the book off her shelf for me because of our conversation - I can't remember - somehow it ended up in my hands.  I began reading it, and found myself laughing out loud - which I'm not sure has ever happened to me from reading a book.  My brother's girlfriend then (rather thoughtfully) gave it to me as a Christmas present and I've recently pulled it off my shelf as a form of self-care, to get away from the piles of work that have been slowly eating me alive this semester... bite by bite.

Here are a few excerpts:

(from chapter Types of Women in Romantic Comedies Who Are Not Real)

I love romantic comedies. I feel almost sheepish writing that, because the genre has been so degraded in the past 20 years or so that admitting you like these movies is essentially an admission of mild stupidity.  But that has not stopped me from watching them... I simply regard romantic comedies as a sub-genre of sci-fi, in which the world created therein has different rules than my regular human world... So it makes sense that in this world there are many specimens of women who I do not think exist in real life, like Vulcans or UFO people or whatever.  They are:

THE KLUTZ

When a beautiful actress is in a movie, executives wrack their brain to find some kind of flaw in her that still allows her to be palatable... A not 100-percent-perfect-looking-in-every-way female?  You might as well film a dead squid decaying on a beach somewhere for two hours... Our Klutz clangs into Stop signs while riding a bike, and knocks over giant displays of expensive fine china.  Despite being five foot nine and weighing 110 pounds, she is basically like a drunk buffalo who has never been a part of human society.  But Fred Tom loves her anyway.

THE ETHEREAL WEIRDO

...If she were from real life, people would think she was a homeless woman and would cross the street to avoid her, but she is essential to the male fantasy that even if a guy is boring, he deserves a woman who will find him fascinating and pull him out of himself by forcing him to go skinny-dipping in a stranger's pool.

THE WOMAN WHO IS OBSESSED WITH HER CAREER AND IS NO FUN AT ALL

...I am slightly offended by the way busy working women my age are presented in film.  I'm not like, always barking orders into my hands-free phone device and telling people constantly, "I have no time for this!" I didn't completely forget how to be nice or feminine because I have a career.  Also, since when does having a job necessitate women having their hair pulled back in a severe, tight bun?  Often this uptight woman has to "re-learn" how to seduce a man because her estrogen leaked out of her from leading so many board meetings... Having a challenging job in movies means the compassionate, warm, or sexy side of your brain has fallen out.

***

Those are just a few, and they make me laugh out loud.  I think she gets at these weird images and ideas that we can get lodged in our mind due to the leading females that we see who get the guy: must be mysterious, it's cute to be klutzy, better not get to work-obsessed or I'll turn into a nasty person.

This commercial actually makes me tear up:

It's when I see the younger girls running as fast as they can.  I'm thinking about how they haven't simply accepted the phrase, or had it take a certain drive out of them.  The look on their faces when they're running as fast as they can just gets me.  They don't have these weird images in their heads yet - the strange ways women can be portrayed and the expectations that can influence them.  These little girls believe in themselves.

I remembered recently how over the summer, in the all girls group, the girls refer to each other as "Girl".  "Girl, let me help you."  "Girl, your hair."  Girl.  Their intonation had this power to it.  It's hard to even imitate it unless I'm around them.

Girl.  Run.  Laugh.  Think.  Be.
And see Romantic Comedies as Sci-Fi movies.

Girl, go!