What with human banality, the steady expansion of female-centered media and the slow morph of the internet into a honeycomb bristling with echo chambers for one, it’s hard not to feel that we are truly living in a golden age of the woman’s magazine list about some bullshit. Every day, more and more web content is available for women to reinforce through numbered statements the idea that we should be incredibly fascinated with our own private lives.
Take it from the internet: all the things you already know are true. Here are 16 things that only a woman’s mag listicle will understand.
1. You really need to know that you’re right about something. Does he bore you? Are you a girl who is breathing? Is it weird that you’re not sure if you’re grown-up?
2. You’re really pretty worried that you’re doing something wrong. Is this normal? Is your boss trying to undermine you? In lieu of certainty about the future, would it help to recount the most unremarkable features of your present and past?
3. You’re pretty sure, though, that life is just one crazy ride on your way to figuring it all out. You’re still so grateful for those little moments when the sun hits just right as you’re walking down the crowded sidewalk to work, and you’ve got the right song in your headphones, and you know you’re just the protagonist of your own story, on your way to some perfectly imperfect end.
4. You are white. Unless the headline is about ways to confirm the quirks of your ethnicity.
5. You are straight, and this is a definitive aspect of the way you live. This is true particularly if the list is about your fixation on another woman: a BFF, a crush.
6. You want things, to the point where your whole life is defined by wanting. But it’s a want predicated on a strong floor of comfort, which is to say that you want but you don’t need. You’re not cold except for a more luxurious blanket to wrap around you while you order nachos. You’re not hungry, except maybe for a boyfriend that actually texts you back.
7. You’re almost to the bottom of this. Here’s the thing, like: if your friends are prettier than you, then do they make you look ugly in comparison? It’s hard to know, because when you see groups of friends, you see sort of their composite look, right? So if your friends are prettier than you then they’ve got to make you look prettier than you too, right? But wait, is that even possible? Can a person be prettier than herself? Hold on—is that what the whole magazine is trying to tell you? But are they trying to say it’s possible or that it’s not? Which is it? Are you stuck as the person you were born as, or can you become the person you want to be?
8. Actually, in the grand scheme of things, you’ve got it pretty good. Leave the fuss to the girls three years younger than you, honestly, no matter how old you are. There’s nothing you’d rather do tonight than just stay in, FaceTime your best friend, and catch up on that DVR backlog.
9. You’re still a little worried that you are too young or too old to be doing what you’re doing at any given time. You’re all about being different, but—like—you don’t want people to not want to hang out with you. You’re strapped to the mean of existence like it’s a slowly ticking clock.
10. You wildly overestimate your problems, as well as the importance of what is happening to you at any given moment. He’s sitting across from you on the subway. HOW DO YOU KNOW IF HE’S GONNA BE A GOOD DAD? He’s your boyfriend. WHAT IF YOU CAN’T PREDICT THE VAGARIES OF HIS ULTIMATELY UNKNOWABLE MIND? She’s your roommate. BUT LIKE SERIOUSLY IS SHE AN ACTUAL PSYCHO?????? IS TONIGHT THE NIGHT THAT YOU’RE GONNA DIE?
11. Still, you can admit your vulnerabilities. Good for you. I’ve never been great at this.
12. Actually, you’re pretty proud that you’ve gone this long without talking about him. I mean, those neck kisses 🙂
13. You find it consistently impossible to wrap your head around the sharp common miracle that is love. You’re young, in other words, or at least you’re wasting your energy as if you were.
14. Your desires just feel so broad and engulfing. They are as broad as your particularities are minute, or more precisely, as broad as you believe them to be, which equals the minuteness you attribute to your ordinary particulars. You like your coffee just that way, raw sugar and a splash of almond milk, and is it so much to wish you had a vaguely scruffy man-figure around who never forgets it?
15. You’re relatable, no matter what. You’ve got money, but not so much that you don’t feel broke all the time. You’re secure, but not so secure that you’re not in this list. You’re worried, but not about anything too serious. You believe in things, but mostly in yourself. You are immensely individual and you love hearing someone say “Same.” You drink, you text while you drink, you love Netflix, you cry in the car, you’re not perfect and you’re content in that non-perfection, particularly if you’ve got something to distract you like a cappuccino with a perfect little leaf in it, or if you remember that one day you’ll find love.
16. You’re not alone. You’re not alone. You’ll never be alone.
Do you agree? Share this with your girlfriends who are just as unique as you are, and if I’ve missed anything, tell me in the comments!
Images via Shutterstock
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