smart, strong, sensual woman
I’ve decided to enter my thirties emulating the self-assured dork I wish I had been while fully pubing out.
A few years ago, there was this meme going around where you were to pick three fictional characters who capture your essence. I picked School of Rock’s Dewey Finn, Ghost World (movie version)’s Enid, and Miss Frizzle from the Magic School Bus. Dewey Finn is less a reflection of me as he is a character who wrote my personality, to an extent — the movie, still among my favourites, came out when I was ten, the same age as the children Dewey mentors. There is an aspect of Dewey’s attitude in my relationship to authority, pedagogy, and what I sometimes call “the opposite of imposter syndrome” — imposter joy. Trickster modalities. Approaching all professional or academic opportunities like they are the grounds for a hilarious heist situation. Also, when people are being kind to me, they tell me my celebrity lookalike is Drew Barrymore. When they are being honest, it’s Jack Black.
Enid and Miss Frizzle are both less accurate, or at least aspirational. I picked the former for some true-to-life reasons — an age-gapped relationship entered into when I was still relatively fresh from high school, with someone my peers did not understand as attractive the way I did, which I think actually reflects an ability to observe without judgement and an aesthetic appreciation for manifestations of beauty which are not what I am regularly told girls my age are supposed to think are sexy.