Nails. I cut my fingernails yesterday and they are so short, right down to the skin, the way I love them. I once tried to grow them out, when I was a teenager, when I wore mascara and contacts and plucked my eyebrows and shaved my armpits and legs and wore a bra. Ha! I wore a bra when I was a teenager and weighed 100 pounds. If I don't need one now, nursing my nearly 6 month old baby, I sure didn't need one then. But teenagers are all about conforming and breaking away from conformity without actually breaking away from it at all. Conforming by rebelling. Dyeing hair, becoming a vegetarian, that sort of thing. The nails thing, though. That was a short-lived phase. No matter what, I'm just a dirty person. I like touching things. I get dirt under my fingernails at a fast pace. It took me awhile, just there, to say "at a fast pace." I wanted to say something clever. I also chip paint on my nails faster than you can see cheezit! If it gets to the point of drying without smudging, it's chipped. So I've learned to let my body be the way that makes me happy. Short nails, hairy pits, unplucked brows. And thank god for modern technology that makes it so I'm no longer a glasses person. LASIK is from the nonexistent gods.
ps I'm still a vegetarian 20 years later.
