It was really more of a fainting couch, actually. But on that criminally mauve monstrosity set in the second floor girl’s bathroom of my West Texas high school, I found solace. I ate roughly 327 lunches there, hiding out from a cafeteria peppered with beautiful girls. Popular girls. Girls who drove nice cars and carried even nicer handbags. I drove a red 1978 GMC pickup. Sometimes, the stick shift came out of the floor.
From my earliest memories, all I wanted in life was to take after my mother. And my mother’s mother. We were BFF’s, and I could hardly wait to be initiated into the sisterhood. I wanted to dress like them, eat like them, think like them.
Looking back…this meant mom jeans, reckless food abandon, days spent antique shopping, and nights at home listening to Buddy Holly on endless loop. Not what society would call sexy, exactly.
I learned one thing at an early age: sweet and sexy were nothing if not mutually exclusive. And I silently vowed never to advertise myself as blatantly glamorous or cosmetic, choosing rather to hide my light under a bushel for only the most determined suitors to discover. Until the unveiling, I would remain loyal to my girls.
So, what does make me feel sexy? At first, I had no idea how to answer that. “Sexy” isn’t a word I usually identify with. Loyal? Fiercely. Original…I hope so. Blessed with an uncanny ability to bond with and/or terrify every waiter I’ve ever had, absolutely. Sexy? Not so much. But the assignment specifically called for “sexy,” so sexy it’d have to be. I tried to think.
SEXY LIST:
• The minutes and hours immediately following a great workout…the kind that leaves you so sweaty and sore and exhausted you’re sure you’re going to have to ask the neighbor to brush your teeth tomorrow
• That concaveness in the place where your stomach and stems meet. Or the first time you see your collar bone in a strapless dress. Or cheekbones. Ah, cheekbones.
• That moment when you laugh so hard with your boyfriend/best friend/mom that you don’t even care if you sound like Muttley the dog
• Big Texas Hair
Then I realized why I’ve never identified with the word “sexy.” Unfortunately, we live in a world that equates s-e-x-y with percentage of skin shown. And, more often than not, it hinges precariously on the opinion or presence of a second party. Don’t believe me? Ask yourself: If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? If a woman spends nine months getting ready for her high school reunion and nobody shows, does she feel validated?
Don’t get me wrong…I’m not that friend with the “great personality.” But the times when I’ve felt sexiest in my life had nothing to do with my body…and they always seem to take place in the proverbial forest with no one around to witness the occasion.
SEXY IN THE FOREST LIST:
• When I learned how to drive a stick shift
• The time I dropped out of Pleather High - only to return a year later, face my fear of all things synthetic, and graduate with a college scholarship
• Grad school
• Every time I clean out a closet or leave something better than I found it
• Cleaning, period
• The year I packed my bags and moved 1,100 miles away from everything I knew and loved, sobbing most of the way and fighting every impulse to turn around
• And starting a writing career
What I didn’t know then, and what I’m still learning now, is that I was living in a home with Texas’s version of The Pussycat Dolls, circa 1980. The most influential women in my life were always teaching me to be the best version of myself…nudging me towards a fate of becoming the most confident, fearless, inspired, alive woman the world had ever seen. Or the Jones family, at least. And that…is sexy.
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