// Girly Girl.//

I grew up playing extremely competitive soccer. In fact, I come from a family who ate soccer for breakfast and whose father used the carrots as players at the dinner table to explain the new plays and formations he thought of during the day. My troublesome teen conversations with my parents often went something like: “Meg, You have been having trouble with your field vision when playing mid-field lately… is everything okay?” or “Meg, Your first touch on the ball was off yesterday, are you taking drugs?”.

Okay so maybe it didn’t go that far, but yeah pretty much that far. Anyways, I usually made some feeble attempts at being girly despite my demanding soccer clothes-wearing schedule. For the most part, though, I was always proud to have such a great excuse for owning sports bras and sweatpants. Once, during my junior year of college soccer, the school newspaper’s anonymous fashion columnist wrote an entire article on how awful female athletes on campus look and dress all of the time. My anti-girly-girl pride only grew and surprisingly enough that article made girl volleyball, cross country, and soccer players much closer than they were before. Naturally we all “joked” about teaching that anonymous writer how to slide tackle, catch a spike with her face, and run 60 miles a week in a mini skirt.

Throughout my club soccer career (pre-college) I had a team mate that had at some point picked up the nick name “girly-girl”. She was not particularly girly when compared to the rest of us, but I always remember thinking that I would most likely jump off a cliff if any one called me a girly girl. I started wearing make up late into college and when soccer finally ended I was confused to say the least. Where in the world was I going to find the money for normal clothing now? It was quite the conundrum. 

So much has changed. My metamorphosis, quite unlike Kafka’s, only just occurred to me last week! While I was busy thinking about how jealous I was of a co-workers gold sparkly shoes and how great of a financial investment a cheetah print scarf would be, it hit me. I am a total girl. Now, I am married and despite the fact that my husband first fell in love with a girl in ripped up jean shorts and an old vans sweatshirt (who probably had not showered for a few days and was asking him to go skateboarding) he still loves me now. So, I suppose that what I am really trying to say is that I am not ashamed to listen to Taylor Swift and watch The Bachelor (Okay, a little ashamed there) or of myself… I hope to use my distinct personality changes as skills in whatever career I end up pursuing. And I am also trying to say that today I bought red lipstick and gold dangly earrings at the mall and if you think thats lame I will absolutely slide tackle you.