The “Bossypants” case for why Tina Fey and I should be friends

Posted On July 21, 2011

I can’t believe I’ve held off this long, but I finally picked up “Bossypants” by Tina Fey this week, and even though I’m not all the way through it yet, I already have more than enough evidence to prove my case that Tina Fey and I were meant to be friends (or prove the state’s case when I am standing trial for stalking Tina Fey — either one).

Several times in my reading so far, I thought Tina had actually stopped writing about herself and started writing about me. Take, for instance, her description of aging:

At a certain point your body wants to be disgusting. While your teens and twenties were about identifying and emphasizing your “best features,” your late thirties and forties are about fighting back decay. You pluck your patchy beard daily. Your big toe may start to turn jauntily inward…We all mentally prepare ourselves for wrinkles, but wrinkles are not the problem. It’s the unexpected grosseries. (Fey 113-114)*

It’s like she’s been secretly filming me every morning in my bathroom!

And her opinion on Hooters and the “hotty-ing” up of America? Yeah, it’s like she took the words right out of my mouth (but then mixed them around, substituted a few and made them sound really funny):

I’ve never understood why every character being “hot” was necessary for enjoying a TV show. Its the same reason I don’t get Hooters. Why do we need to enjoy chicken wings and boobies at the same time? Yes, they are a natural and beautiful part of the human experience. And so are boobies. But why at the same time? Going to the bathroom is part of life, but we wouldn’t go to a restaurant that had toilets for seats … or would we? (Fey 193)

But the icing on the proverbial hot dog was in her chapter entitled “Remembrances of Being a Little Bit Fat” (which follows the chapter “Remembrances of Being Very Very Skinny),” where she lists what she remembers about that particular period in her life. As I read, I was nodding and smiling, making connections and chuckling under my breath. But it was when I got to her very last bullet point that I felt the hair stand up on the back of my little-bit-fat neck:

Once, while ironing in my underwear, I grazed my protruding belly with the hot iron. (Fey 118)

Now, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I present you with Exhibit A: My blog post from September 12, 2008, entitled, “Please Tell Me This Has Happened to Someone Else…“

You find yourself ironing in your bra and underwear.

You underestimate just how much your expanding tummy now protrudes (and NOT because there’s a bun in the oven either).

Consequently, your middle section unknowingly gets a WEE BIT too close to the ironing board . . . and suddenly you have a burn mark from the iron right across your gut.

Now covered by a Go, Diego Go Band-aid.

I ask you, was this a coincidence, or something else? Did Tina Fey read my blog and then subconsciously remember it as happening to her when she was penning her memoir? Although I do have to admit I’m all that, I don’t think I’m quite all that.

I will argue, instead, that it was kismet and let the hard evidence speak for itself.

Works Cited

Fey, Tina. Bossypants. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2011. Print.

*Yes, I am actually using parenthetical notation and a Works Cited entry at the end of this post. Yes, I am that serious about establishing these connections between Ms. Fey and myself. No, I didn’t have to look up how to format it. (Yes I did.)