What makes a lady?

I started reading Bossypants this week...Tina Fey makes me laugh out loud while reading, and then I interrupt whatever James is doing to read him whatever it was that made me laugh. My delivery is off, but I think he gets the comic idea.

She talks about how she went to a conference while doing research for Mean Girls, the best Lindsey Lohan movie of all time (admittedly not saying much here). At this conference the women were asked to write down the time they first time they truly felt like a woman. Turns out most of them wrote down things like being heckled at by dudes. Cat calls, nice tits, look at that ass, etc. Sad.

It was this year, my 27th on this fine earth that I think I started to feel like a woman for the first time...and it was all because of lipstick. You see, I have small lips. Tiny lips. My top lip is basically non-existant. Growing up I tried not to show my teeth when smiling in photos because it made my non-lips even smaller. I remember doing makeovers at a slumber party when I was maybe 13 and my friend's mom told me I could always draw on an upper lip with lip liner ("Just like movie stars!" she told me). Due to my non-lip complex I never wore lipstick. Gloss, tint, maybe lightly colored chapstick...yes. Bright red lipstick? No.

This year I said fuck it. I like red lipstick. I like orangey red lipstick. I like bubblegum pink lipstick. I want to wear it. So I did what any grown woman does, I bought 99 cent L.A. Colors lipstick from the dollar store near my house. Don't judge...I wanted to test my ability to wear before making a more expensive purchase.

It's not really the lipstick that makes me feel like a woman. It's the fact that I finally said fuck it.