24.

The Popular Girls

Today I had to go up to the La Encantada Mall, the fancy mall with perfect small squares of real grass and decorative pots full of flowers that magically exude soothing classical music. I was having one of those days where I’m strangely attracted to all things hot pink (happens less frequently now, but it was really a problem during my first two years of college – and thank you Julie for not letting me buy those shorts at Sportmart. You were right.) So naturally I found myself in the Victoria Secret, both drawn to and repelled by all of the bedazzled underwear. As I was standing at the counter letting a woman rub "crackling glitter body mousse" onto my left arm, I realized just how quickly I can be snapped back into my teenage body.

I was at the La Encantada Mall to get help with my .Mac account, basically to put an end to the 4 a.m., cold sweat, my-dissertation-is-lost-forever panic attacks. After 45 minutes with my assigned genius, Ned, my entire computer was backed up and I had learned how to insert ancient Greek letters and symbols into my Word documents. Ned fixed up my permissions, gave me plug-ins, and ordered me a new keyboard—it was liberating. So how does a person go from feeling genuinely elated over circumflexes to lacquered with crackling glitter body mousse?

The girl with the mousse intimidated me. She was Jaci Jaguer and Jenny Albers, Jessica Nobles and Megan Lutz, Lindsay Howells—all of those girls who have always been way cooler than me. I thought I was over being scared of the popular girls, but when the girl at Victoria Secret insisted that I shellac my arm, I simply pulled up my sleeve and agreed that the scent really was so fresh and light. In that moment I realized that there is a part of me that still wants, badly, to be Cindy Mancini in Can’t Buy Me Love.

Cindy Mancini had the best hair in the world. I have always had hair issues (starting way before the recent series of back-to-back bad haircuts). My hair’s always just been sort of bark-like and (before the haircutting spree) I never did anything with it. The sleep in French braids wavy look, Cindy Mancini's signature do, was about as stylish as I got. I remember getting up early one morning my freshman year of high school and working really hard to put my hair in a ponytail with a blue bow that matched my Gap plaid shorts. I was taking a risk, going for cute, but then John Spannagel came up to me first period and said, “Oh, Kelly, you really shouldn’t wear your hair up.” John Spannagel. It took me years to brave anything in the realm of up-do.

But here’s what I realized today: More than Cindy Mancini, what I really want is to be the person who looks at Cindy when she’s standing there with the glitter mousse and says, “No”—not in a jerky way, but in a really honest, that just sounds like a horrible plan for me way. “No, no I do not.” I image that I’d smile and maybe laugh a little when I said it—because really, I don’t want to be mean or judgmental, I just don’t want to pretend like I’m into the glitter and I don’t want to feel bad about myself because I’m not. It wouldn’t be a rushed, just trying to get out of an awkward situation “No” either. It would be a really honest admission of the fact that the idea of crackling mouse terrifies but also secretly sort of intrigues me, so I’m going to have to circle around the bra bins a few times and then sneak back, grab the bottle, and spray a tiny bit when no one’s looking. And it’d probably crack me up a little because the stuff really did crackle. I know enough about myself at this point to know that I am much more comfortable as the person who laughs out loud by the bra bins—not as the person who says, “Yah, it is totally fresh and light” while a stranger rubs cold, crackling goo onto my arm.

The problem is, when I’m in a situation like that, I tend to revert back to the me who was in awe of the popular girls and easily shamed. No matter how strong and smart and sassy I become, I still carry all of those old insecurities with me. Most of the time they are buried beneath all of the layers of personality and experience that I’ve built and am continuing to build, but there are still striking moments where I want nothing more than to be popular.