All It Took Was 500 Miles

With a cascade of blonde curls, saucer-sized green eyes, and two rosy cheeks, my baby pictures scream apple pie. Think Gerber baby. Think Jodie Foster in those Coppertone advertisements. I had “the look” back in the day, the one that stopped every other woman in the grocery store aisle to spin and comment gratuitously to my mother.

Much to her dismay.

As a young girl, I began to stray from the girly path so carefully crafted for me by toy companies and television commercials. I was a tomboy by then, more comfortable immersed in the pages of the latest Nancy Drew mystery than with the well-coiffed Barbie dolls and Disney princesses beckoning for my attention. I swam in ponds. I learned to throw a baseball. I was taken in by the pack of boys who roamed my neighborhood without objection. I was allowed to be my own kind of girl.

But adolescence put an end to all that. As it does for many girls. The only ranking system that seemed important in high school had to do with boys. How many liked you. Which ones liked you. And what you could do to increase that number. This trinity is timeless it appears, as much in play with the teenage girls I now work with as it was back when I was in their shoes; trying to fit in, trying to be popular, trying to please everyone else but me.