by Tina Fey
Finding a hairstylist you trust is key. For many years I worked exclusively with the students at the Gordon Phillips Beauty Academy. The sign out front said it all—“Gordon Phillips Beauty Academy, London, Paris, Upper Darby.” Always on the cutting edge of beauty, I believe this haircut was executed by folding my face in half and cutting out a heart. Of course I must be honest; this is clearly a professional photo taken on “picture day.” I didn’t look this sleek and pulled together all the time.
8) Q: But Tina, Most of Us Don’t Have Constant Access to a Hairstylist. What Do
We Do?
A: First of All, Don’t Speak to Me in That Tone. Second of All, You Must Learn to Tame Your Own Mane!
I first found a system that worked for me in the mid-eighties. Once or twice a week I would set my alarm for six A.M. so I could get up and plug in the Hot Stix. Hot Stix were heated rubber sticks, and you would twist your hair around them and roll it up. After about fifteen minutes, you took all the sticks out, and your hair was curled up in tight rings (with dry raggedy ends). I would study the curls in the mirror, impressed with both the appliance and my newfound ability to use it.
Then, without fail, at the last second before leaving for school, I would ask myself, “Am I supposed to brush it out or leave it?” Why could I never remember? That feeling of “I’m pretty sure this next step is wrong, but I’m just gonna do it anyway” is part of the same set of instincts that makes me such a great cook.
On some level I knew I wasn’t supposed to brush it out, but I couldn’t stop myself.
My hand—gripping the brush like it was a hand transplant from a murderer who hated beauty!—brushed through the curls, turning them into a giant static-filled mess. By the end of homeroom it was pulled into a ponytail, which really works on me, so there you have it.
Right after I graduated high school I decided to cut my hair off. This was my chance to reinvent myself before college.
After a harsh disagreement over the ideational hollowness of sausage curls, my mother and I had ended our artistic experiment with the Gordon Phillips Academy. We were now getting our hair cut by my classmate’s mom, who was also a professional Ann Jillian look-alike. Yes, the feeling you’re experiencing right now is jealousy. The whole family was glamorous that way. I always envied their lives because they seemed like they were living in a sitcom. They were all blond and good-looking. The mom cut hair out of her basement salon and Ann Jillian–ed part-time. You could sell this show to CBS just with that! The dad ran a restaurant. Their uncle was our school’s “cool” English teacher. The oldest son was a young Bon Jovi type who was the star of our high school choir and went all the way to New York once a week for private hard-rock vocal coaching. The middle son was a brilliant, funny, cuddly giant who drew sardonic cartoons in the margins of things, and the baby of the family was the Jason Priestley–level adorable kid who, clearly, the producers of the family had added in the last season to boost ratings. I mean, just looking at this family, you knew they were going to make it to syndication.
It was natural that I would trust Mrs. Doyle to transform me into my new college self. I wanted to cut it all off. Not the coward’s move, not a bob: the full choppery. Mrs. Doyle put my hair into a thick ponytail, cut that ponytail off, and handed it to me. I still have it somewhere in a cardboard box in my parents’ house. I know because my mom has been politely asking me to “maybe spend an hour going through those boxes” for over twenty years now.
The haircut was cropped close on the sides, fuller on top, with two long Liza Minnelli–esque wisps that hung down like peyes. I loved it. Then I asked whether we needed the wisps, but once it was explained to me that they were mandatory, I went back to loving it.
Nerd no more, this new cut let people see the real me that was inside—a mother of four who was somehow also a virgin.
9) When It Comes to Fashion, Find What Works for You and Stick with It
A wise friend once told me, “Don’t wear what fashion designers tell you to wear. Wear what they wear.” His point being that most designers, no matter what they throw onto the runway, favor simple, flattering pieces for themselves.
Anyone who has never met me can tell you that fashion has always been very very very very very very very important to me. For example, I once told my cousin that my dream would be “if the whole store Express was my closet!” How prescient, because now, of course, I wear nothing but Express.
It can’t be said enough. Don’t concern yourself with fashion; stick to simple pieces that flatter your body type.
By nineteen, I had found my look. Oversize T-shirts, bike shorts, and wrestling shoes. To prevent the silhouette from being too baggy, I would cinch it at the waist with my fanny pack. I was pretty sure I would wear this look forever. The shirts allowed me to express myself with cool sayings like “There’s No Crying in Baseball” and “Universität Heidelberg,” the bike shorts showed off my muscular legs, and the fanny pack held all my trolley tokens. I was nailing it on a daily basis. Find something like this for yourself as soon as possible.
10) A Manicure Is a Must
Once I moved to New York in 1997, I discovered the joys of the quickie Korean manicure. The city is filled with tiny storefront nail salons where you can get a manicure-pedicure, an underarm wax, and a ten-minute series of punches in the back, all for under a hundred dollars. The first few times you go, it can be intimidating. For starters, you may forget that you yourself speak English. You enter, smile, and nod at the manager. “Manicure-pedicure?” “Pick color,” she chirps back in her Korean accent. You pick out a couple of the three hundred shades of off-white. “This for manicure. This feet. Magazine okay?” Why are you talking like that? Now that you’ve racially embarrassed yourself, you are ready to squeeze into a seat at a tiny table and basically hold hands with a stranger for twenty minutes. That really is the craziest thing the first few times you go, getting used to passively flopping your hands into another woman’s hands. It’s like something they’d make you do at summer camp as a trust-building exercise, I assume. I never went to summer camp, as I was neither underprivileged nor Jewish nor extremely Christian, nor obese. (It would be a great exercise for someone who thinks they want to move to New York. Sit in an enclosed space full of fumes and hold hands with a stranger for twenty minutes while everyone around you speaks a language you don’t understand. If you enjoy this, you will enjoy the 6 train.)
To take your mind off how weird it is to have someone else clean your fingers, there is a series of theatrical performances all around you. To your right you might find a New Yorker speaking animatedly about an apartment she has seen. “It was sick. You don’t even know. Marble slabs.” The more New Yorkers like something, the more disgusted they are. “The kitchen was all Sub-Zero: I want to kill myself. The building has a playroom that makes you want to break your own jaw with a golf club. I can’t take it.” To your left may sit an older woman eating cashews with one hand while talking on the phone with the other while still receiving a manicure and oversharing. “I know. I was crying about it on the toilet this morning—*to manicurist+ don’t cut the cuticles, please.” As you listen closer, you will suspect that she is participating in a paid therapy session over the phone. “Well, you know, it’s about setting boundaries. He has to be told, ‘If we’re gonna have these conversations it shouldn’t be when one of us is drunk and the other one is hanging upside down in the gravity boots.’ ” As you listen longer, you’re not sure if she’s the patient or the therapist. “Do I think it’s good that you’re angry? Why would I think it’s good that you’re angry?” There are never fewer than eight Tracey Ullman characters in any NYC nail salon at any given time.
If all this becomes too much for you, just look up and focus on the poster of a hand with long red nails holding a violin incorrectly.
Before you know it, your manicure is done and looking great. Your fingernails look healthy and fresh, and the shiny varnish will help hide the little particles of garbage and human
feces that all city dwellers are slightly covered in!
11) Aging Naturally Without Looking Like Time-Lapse Photography of a
Rotting Sparrow
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. Overnight you may grow one long straight white pubic hair. Not that this has happened to me, of course, because every six months I get a very expensive Japanese treatment that turns my pubic hair clear like rice noodles.
We all mentally prepare ourselves for wrinkles, but wrinkles are not the problem. It’s the unexpected grosseries.
For example, your mouth. Dear God, your mouth. No matter how diligent you are about brushing and flossing—which is never diligent enough for that show-off dental hygienist of yours—at some point you start waking up every day with a mouth that smells like a snail left in the sun. You can fix it as soon as you get up—you brush and use mouthwash—but there’s something about knowing you woke up with hot-mothball mouth that makes you feel old.
I think God designed our mouths to die first to help us slowly transition to the grave. But I am a big believer in “Intelligent Design,” and by that I mean I love IKEA!
12) The Most Important Rule of Beauty
If you retain nothing else, always remember the most important Rule of Beauty. “Who cares?”
Remembrances of Being Very Very Skinny
For a brief time at the turn of the century, I was very skinny. This is what I remember about that period.
I was cold all the time.
I had a pair of size-four corduroy short shorts. That I wore. To work. In the middle of Manhattan.
I loved it when people told me I was getting too thin.
I once took a bag of sliced red peppers to the beach as a snack.
I regularly ate health food cookies so disgusting that when I enthusiastically gave one to Rachel Dratch she drew a picture of a rabbit and broke the cookie into a trail of tiny pieces coming out of the rabbit’s butt.
Men I had met before suddenly paid attention to me… and I hated them for it.
Sometimes I had to sleep with a pillow between my legs because my bony knees clanking together kept me awake.
I had a lot of time on my hands because I wasn’t constantly eating.
I ran three miles a day on a treadmill six days a week.
I felt wonderfully superior to everyone.
I didn’t have a kid yet.
We should leave people alone about their weight. Being skinny for a while (provided you actually eat food and don’t take pills or smoke to get there) is a perfectly fine pastime. Everyone should try it once, like a super-short haircut or dating a white guy.
Remembrances of Being a Little Bit Fat
For a brief time at the end of that last century I was overweight. This is what I remember about that period.
My boobs were bigger.
I once left a restaurant in the middle of dessert to get to Krispy Kreme before it closed.
Even though I only liked McDonald’s fries, I believed it was more nutritious to make a meal of it and have two cheeseburgers as well.
If I was really ambitious, I would get a Whopper Jr. at Burger King and then walk to McDonald’s to get the fries. The shake could be from anywhere.
I could not run a mile.
I wore oversize men’s overalls that I loved.
Guys who were friends with me did not want to date me… and I hated them for it.
On at least three occasions, I vomited on Christmas Eve from mixing chocolate, peel-and-eat shrimp, summer sausage, and cheese. No alcohol was involved.
As a size twelve, I took pride in the idea that I was “real woman”–sized. “Size twelve is the national average,” I would boast, “no matter what magazines try to tell you.”
Once, while ironing in my underwear, I grazed my protruding belly with the hot iron.
We should leave people alone about their weight. Being chubby for a while (provided you don’t give yourself diabetes) is a natural phase of life and nothing to be ashamed of. Like puberty or slowly turning into a Republican.
A Childhood Dream, Realized
(Not the One Where I’m Being Chased by Count Chocula)
In 1997 I flew to New York from Chicago to interview for a writing position at Saturday Night Live. It seemed promising because I’d heard the show was looking to diversify. Only in comedy, by the way, does an obedient white girl from the suburbs count as diversity. I came for my job interview in the only decent clothes I had—my “show clothes” from The Second City. Black pants and a lavender chenille sweater from Contempo Casuals. I went to the security guard at the elevator and I heard myself say,
“I’m here to see Lorne Michaels.” I couldn’t believe the words that were coming out of my mouth. “I’m here to see Lorne Michaels.” I was living one of my dreams. This must be how people feel when they really do go to school naked by accident.
I went up to the seventeenth-floor offices, which were lined with archival photos from the show—Jane Curtin ripping her shirt open on Weekend Update, Gilda Radner and Candice Bergen in a Beach Blanket Bingo sketch, Al Franken’s head shot! Then I sat on a couch and waited for my meeting with Lorne. About an hour into the wait, the assistants started making popcorn in a movie theater popcorn machine—something I would later learn signaled Lorne’s imminent arrival. To this day the smell of fresh popcorn causes me to experience stress, hunger, and sketch ideas for John Goodman.
The only advice anyone had given me about meeting with Lorne was “Whatever you do, don’t finish his sentences.” A Chicago actress I knew had apparently made that mistake and she believed it cost her the job. When I was eventually ushered into his office, I sat down, determined not to blow it.
Lorne said, “So you’re from…”
It seemed to hang there forever. Why wasn’t he finishing the question? If I answered now, would this count as my talking over him? I couldn’t remember how normal human speech patterns worked. Another five seconds went by, and still no more sentence from Lorne. Oh, God. When I flew back to Chicago the next day they were going to say, “How was your meeting with Lorne Michaels?” And I would reply, “He said ‘So you’re from’ and then we sat there for an hour and then a girl came in and asked me to leave.”
After what was probably, realistically, ten seconds, I couldn’t take it anymore and I blurted out,
“Pennsylvania. I’m from Pennsylvania, a suburb of Philadelphia,” just as Lorne finally finished his thought, “Chicago.” I was sure I had blown it. I don’t remember anything else that happened in the meeting because I just kept staring at the nameplate on his desk that said “Lorne Michaels” and thinking, “This is the guy with the Beatles check!” I couldn’t believe I was in his office. I could have never guessed that in a few years I’d be sitting in that office at two, three, four in the morning, thinking, “If this meeting doesn’t end soon, I’m going to kill this Canadian bastard.” Somehow, I had gotten the job.
During my nine years at Saturday Night Live, my relationship with Lorne transitioned from
“Terrified Pupil and Reluctant Teacher” to “Small-Town Girl and Streetwise Madam Showing Her the Ropes” to “Annie and Daddy Warbucks (touring company)” to one of mutual respect and friendship.
Then it transitioned to “Sullen Teenage Girl and Generous Stepfather,” then to “Mr. and Mrs. Michael Jackson,” then, for a brief period, to “Boy Who Doesn’t Believe in Christmas and Recluse Neighbor Who Proves that Miracles Are Possible,” then back to mutual respect and friendship again.
I’ve learned many things from Lorne, in particular a managerial style that was the opposite of Bossypants.
Things I Learned from Lorne Michaels
1) “Producing is about discouraging creativity.”
A TV show comprises many depa
rtments—Costumes, Props, Talent, Graphics, Set Dressing, Transportation. Everyone in every department wants to show off their skills and contribute creatively to the show, which is a blessing. You’re grateful to work with people who are talented and enthusiastic about their jobs. You would think that as a producer, your job would be to churn up creativity, but mostly your job is to police enthusiasm. You may have an occasion where the script calls for a bran muffin on a white plate and the Props Department shows up with a bran cake in the shape of Santa Claus sitting on a silver platter that says “Welcome to Denmark.” “We just thought it would be funny.”
And you have to find a polite way to explain that the character is Jewish, so her eating Santa’s face might have negative connotations, and the silver tray, while beautiful, is giving a weird glare on camera and maybe let’s go with the bran muffin on the white plate.