About

When I first started paying attention to beauty and lifestyle people were surprised. I could hardly blame them, as at that point in time I’d been about as “girly” as a rock for the past two and a bit decades. I’d refused to wear a dress until I was about seventeen, and any forays into makeup usually ended with a mascara wand to the eyeball and a strange smear of splotchy colour on my eyelids that was hastily removed before anyone could see my failings. So when people started to notice and comment on how I looked, my first response was usually: “Thanks. I finally learned how to girl.”

This was a running joke for many-a year. When I failed at trying to make my hair do anything other than sit there limply, I failed to girl. When I made an idiot of myself on the dance floor because I possessed all the coordination and grace of a newborn foal, I failed to girl.

It wasn’t until I became a high school teacher and started working with young girls that I realised the failing in my logic. The bottom line is that there IS no correct way to “girl”. You don’t HAVE to do girly things to be a girl. Similarly, you also don’t have to maintain your image as a tomboy (bless you baggy emo pants of the early 2000’s) to defy the stereotypes of “girl” either. I am no less a girl on days where I wear my ratty Chuck Taylors and that band t-shirt I should have thrown out eight years ago than I am on days where I’m teetering awkwardly on heels in a sparkly dress. I’m no less failing at being a girl (or a human for that matter) on days where I feel like crawling under the covers and sleeping for a week than days where I put on my big girl panties and pony up to the challenges and struggles of life.

So that’s what this blog is about. It’s about all the varied and different ways that we “girl”, whether that’s by making ourselves feel pretty with shiny things and pretty colours, or by kicking butt and accomplishing a new goal. The How to Girl community is all about celebrating what makes us US.

And remember: no matter how you choose to girl today, you’re rocking it.