Member-only story
A Journey Through My Body
Stardust or slut?
My toes have chipped blue nail polish. Even though I associate painting my nails with the pleasant nostalgia for childhood, when I bought $2 polishes with my allowance and listened to Savage Garden or watched Buffy as I pretended to be fancy, I don’t keep up on them and they chip fairly readily, leaving just a splash of color across my ever-weary feet. Nevertheless, I feel more like a woman now with polish on my nails.
I try to keep up on shaving my legs too, although I admit I often let them enjoy an extra day of a more natural state. When you live in palazzo pants and workout leggings, that’s an acceptable regimen. It’s less important to maintain baby-smooth legs when you’re not actively courting a date — although in my experience, men care less than magazines suggest they do. They do care about what’s between your legs and its follicilicity. You must balance among comfort, cost, and unreasonable social expectations for female grooming.
I gave up on the unnatural obsession I had with fishnets I had when I was younger; my parents, to their credit, let me experiment with my style. One time outside Wal-Mart, 12-Year-Old Me was proudly wearing my fishnets and an old man leered at me and said with excitement, “You got lines on your legs.”
