I am woman

My whole life I have hated being a girl. Girls weren't supposed to rough-house. They weren't supposed to play Robin Hood or want to be in special-ops when they grow up. My brother always made it clear that wearing dresses and make-up made you simple, stupid and curse of all curses, "girlie." There was no worse put-down someone could use on me than to say I was being "girlie."

For those reasons, and many more, I have fought my whole life to not be feminine. I have always thought it was a sign of weakness. My mom would tell me that being a girl was great because you could have the best of both worlds, wearing a dress while riding a horse. I thought she was a fool for saying that, falling into the world's evil plan. The male run world and its plot to keep females in there place.

But now I have finally seen the wisdom in what she said. I love glitter. I love getting to wear grapefruit flavored lip gloss that makes my lips shiny. It is fabulous getting to wear make-up over a breakout without "the guys" making fun of you. I enjoy dangle-ly earrings and knee boots.

I still enjoy riding horses and playing paintball. I still love martial arts, backpacking and Die Hard. It's just now I get to wear pretty dresses and lip gloss when I go out to eat without feeling like my IQ dropped and I suddenly became boring. In fact, many guys seem to find me more interesting when I take such liberties (but that's another story).

I hope I can pass on this wisdom to future girl generations so that the little girls I know will not have to wait until their mid-twenties to discover this truth. It might help my cause if the cameras stayed away from the Paris Hiltons of the world and a great many romantic comedies. Perhaps my wisdom coupled with Mean Girls, George Eliot novels and Mulan might be able to successfully ingrain this into a new generation of girls faster.