Read an Excerpt
INTRODUCTION: YOU AS A HUMAN PERSON
As far as we know, there are THREE facets of your humanity that make you YOU.
INTELLIGENCE
Have you ever heard the phrase “she’s got a good head on her shoulders”? This isn’t alluding to your competitively priced dandruff-controlling shampoo. Among all the attributes one can present, being the sharpest acrylic toenail on the foot is the most select. In the real world, outwitting another is the equivalent of creeping up to their ear and whispering, “I am inherently better than you.”
The iconic John Waters said, “If you go home with somebody, and they don’t have books, don’t fuck ’em! Don’t sleep with people who don’t read!” Truthfully, you don’t know where they keep their books, so this advice is fairly incomplete. In the summer, I keep my books in my refrigerator next to my AAA batteries and my watermelon SKYY vodka. Also: Owning books doesn’t make someone intelligent. Reading books doesn’t even make someone intelligent. You’re reading a book right now and you’re dumb as hell.
Of course, intelligence presents in many forms. I once worked the front desk at a prestigious salon in Wisconsin. (Contradictory, I know.) That’s where I met Tara, a gorgeous young stylist with glowing skin, bright eyes, and supernaturally blond hair. She had a baby-doll voice and long charcoal lashes. Her clients consisted of women who wanted to be her and married men who wanted to abandon their families and abduct her. I was obsessed with Tara.
The average person would look at a “Tara” and decide she couldn’t be a thinker. After her client consults, however, I would watch Tara bubble into the color room, pull out her glasses, and transition into a talented chemist. She could double-, triple-process colors and buzz out a couple ultraprecise men’s cuts in between. After performing dazzling feats of beauty, she would leave every client feeling like they just had lunch with a Playboy Bunny. Tara the not-so-scatterbrained stylist can teach us something! I learned that the girl who presents as “ditzy” might not want you to know how smart she is. Wielding intelligence welcomes expectation. It’s better to lie in wait as a drooling stooge. Then you can floor everyone by solving a Rubik’s Cube at a holiday party and be like, “What?”
BEAUTY
As long as I’ve been alive, I have known I was gorgeous. The longing glances from adult strangers, the catty remarks from peers, the sexual advances from Uber drivers. Using vocabulary from my Friday afternoon Lyft trip with Mohammad, I am what you would consider “five stars.” However, beauty is entirely in the eye of the beholder. For example: A Trixie Mattel show was reviewed in Newcastle. Let’s call the reviewer Kate because that’s her name. Kate described me as someone who “revels in the repulsion she exudes.” Kate is, as my eye beholds, an ugly fucking cunt.
Of course, many physical attributes are inherently beautiful. Symmetrical features, an oval face, a gold grill. But in modern beauty, individuality and confidence are the oval face. Look at me, for example. Young? Childlike. Tight? As a drum. But I am, most importantly, odd-looking. Some would say I look like Patrick Stewart as a gay farmer. Some would say I look like an ASL interpreter who moonlights as a Klan member. I think I look like Caillou with fetal alcohol syndrome. But looking like a cross-dressing Elmer Fudd gives me uniqueness, and uniqueness has a magnetism all its own. Even now, you are flipping to the cover of this book to reexperience my hypnotizing gaze. Go ahead. I’ll wait.
Conversely, let me tell you about my sister. In order to protect her identity, I don’t want to use her real name, so let’s call her “an embarrassment to my whole family.” My sister is classically beautiful. She’s a tall Native American goddess. Almond eyes, full cheekbones, and artisanal arched brows. Even our family’s tradition of poorly-cared-for teeth (see the chapter titled “Personal Hygiene”) hasn’t stunted her maturation into what rappers would call a “thicc shawty.”
However, the ETMWF has a tongue piercing. She also vapes and makes Instagram videos blowing the smoke out through her nose. A corrupted natural beauty, she is a Westin presenting as an airport Howard Johnson and I cry every night about it. Maybe living in the shadow of my beauty and fame has impaired her.
In any case, a true beauty knows how to make it work, Tim Gunn style. With the transformative magic of styling, hair, and makeup, two gay men can meet on a reality TV competition show and rise to the top of the entertainment industry. Or, for even more of a stretch, you could love yourself.
PERSONALITY
I believe it was the great prophet Britney Jean Spears who said, “There’s only two types of people in the world; the ones that entertain and the ones that observe.” Beauty is a lovely thing to possess, like dual citizenship or a will to live. And intelligence can really help you own a room—particularly if that room is a commercialized escape-room experience. But a great personality can perform wonders: get an ugly girl invited to a social event, keep Ted Bundy on the run, or even land you and your vascular friend a book deal.
Personality is the characteristic behaviors, patterns, and qualities unique to you. If your beauty is the candy-bar wrapper, your personality is the brick of creamy nougat that says, “I’m fun!”
If you’re not sexy, think of personality as a diversion. Who could stay focused on your pockmarked skin when you’ve got such an innate sense of whimsy? “Is half of her body burned? Oh, never mind—she just did a funny voice!”
Of course, most of our personalities could use a little full-coverage concealer dabbed under the eyes. Maybe pull back on that embarrassing laugh. Save your unpopular political views for that midnight cross burning on your lawn. And most importantly, don’t TELL people what to like about you; let people find out what they love about you on their own. You are a Wheel of Fortune puzzle that you must let those worthy of you figure out on their own. Regard your favorable personality traits the way you would feign surprise when complimented on a stunning evening gown— “Oh, this old thing?”
IN CONCLUSION
Of course there’s more to your being yourself than intellect, looks, and persona. There are friendships, family, and love . . . but there are also more important components, like your hairdo and the timbre of your voice. All of the facets that make up you as a human person.
In this book, two of America’s most beloved model/actresses will guide you through every pivot point of female development, and we will buff out your dry cuticles along the way. Everything you’ve done, we have done well, and done it with fuller lashes. We have inhabited every reach of your failures, and done it with puke on our uncomfortable shoes.
And may the best woman WIN!
