Not give a speech.
Not be a talk show guest.
Be an actor.
Acting.
Playing a fictional version of myself, yes. But still . . .
Acting. On TV.
I don’t really have a choice. I’m doing the Year of Yes.
Also? I am in love with her show.
But also?
Mindy is a Dartmouth sister. A member of the mafia.
And Mindy is an F.O.D.
First. Only. Different.
I wonder how many questions she gets about being an Indian-American woman. Probably as many questions as I get about being an African-American woman.
As an African-American woman, how does it feel to fill in the blank?
Here’s a tip. The answer, no matter how you fill in that blank, is always the same: I don’t know. Since I’ve never been anything other than a black woman, I can’t tell you how specifically anything feels any more than someone could tell someone how things feel as a white woman. It’s a creepy question. Stop asking it.
I’m betting Mindy hates the F.O.D. thing as much as I do.
I say yes.
Immediately after I say yes, I become terrified about the entire thing. I think about all the ways I can cancel. I think about getting a serious illness. The third Chris in my life (if you are keeping track, we have Publicist Chris and Godfather Chris), my agent, Chris Silbermann, says there is no way I can cancel. He says that I said I would do it and he told them I would do it. He says I am doing it. He says this very firmly.
I think Publicist Chris and Agent Chris have been talking.
Remind me to do something about that.
Why am I so scared?
I’m not worried about panicking during filming. I survived shooting Kimmel for a full hour. I can survive a few takes without hyperventilating.
I’m not worried about being on set and the cast and crew being mean or making fun of me. TV crews are notoriously great people and no one ever makes fun of guests on set anyway.
I’m worried about what will happen when it airs.
Not because of my acting skills. I don’t think anyone is going to watch me act and say, “My God, Meryl Streep had better hang it up right now because here comes Shonda!” I don’t even think they are going to say that Joe at the community theater should hang it up. But I know I won’t completely shame myself. Well . . . I might shame myself but I have some TV shows, people. I understand the magic that can happen in an editing room. If I cover The Mindy Project set in shame, the producers of the show will kindly hide it in editing. And then, if they are wise, use the footage to blackmail me for the rest of my life.
I am worried that people will be whispering: “Who does she think she is, acting on a TV show? What, does she think she’s all that? Does she have that high an opinion of herself? My, aren’t we just a little in love with ourselves these days?”
You heard me.
I am scared people will think I like myself too much.
yesyesyes
I am on Twitter, checking in on the world, and I see a tweet from some motherhood site. It says: “Sleeplessness is a badge of honor for moms.”
What?
A badge of honor?
Right then and there, my hair catches on fire. My hair just lights up in flames of instant rage. The rage may be especially bad because I still have some PTSD from my oldest child’s infant days.
My perfect beautiful miracle baby?
Never slept. EVER. Never.
So neither did I.
Twelve years later the memories of those nights, of that sleep deprivation, still make me rock back and forth a little bit. You want to torture someone? Hand them an adorable baby they love who doesn’t sleep.
Badge of honor?
Necessary evil, yes. Pain in the ass, yes.
Badge of honor?
Are you freaking kidding me? Who believes that crap? Who is drinking THAT crazy Kool-Aid?
But a lot of people are. MOST people are.
I don’t think it ever occurred to me before how much and how often women are praised for displaying traits that basically render them invisible. When I really think about it, I realize the culprit is the language generally used to praise women. Especially mothers.
“She sacrificed everything for her children . . . She never thought about herself . . . She gave up everything for us . . . She worked tirelessly to make sure we had what we needed. She stood in the shadows, she was the wind beneath our wings.”
Greeting card companies are built on that idea.
“Tell her how much all the little things she does all year long that seem to go unnoticed really mean to you.”
With a $2.59 card.
Mother’s Day is built on that idea.
This is good, we’re told. It’s good how Mom diminishes and martyrs herself. The message is: mothers, you are such wonderful and good people because you make yourselves smaller, because you deny your own needs, because you toil tirelessly in the shadows and no one ever thanks or notices you . . . this all makes you AMAZING.
Yuck.
What the hell kind of message is that?
Would ANYONE praise a man for this?
Those are not behaviors anyone would hope to instill in their daughters, right?
Right?
I’m not saying MOTHERHOOD shouldn’t be praised. Motherhood should be praised. Motherhood is wonderful. I’m doing it. I think it’s great.
There are all kinds of ways and reasons that mothers can and should be praised. But for cultivating a sense of invisibility, martyrdom and tirelessly working unnoticed and unsung? Those are not reasons.
Praising women for standing in the shadows?
Wrong.
Where is the greeting card that praises the kinds of mothers I know? Or better yet, the kind of mother I was raised by?
I need a card that says: “Happy Mother’s Day to the mom who taught me to be strong, to be powerful, to be independent, to be competitive, to be fiercely myself and fight for what I want.”
Or “Happy Birthday to a mother who taught me to argue when necessary, to raise my voice for my beliefs, to not back down when I know I am right.”
Or “Mom, thanks for teaching me to kick ass and take names at work. Get well soon.”
Or simply “Thank you, Mom, for teaching me how to make money and feel good about doing it. Merry Christmas.”
Where are the greeting cards for the kind of mother I try to be? For the kind of mother I need my kids to see? For the kind of mother I want my daughters to one day be?
And if there’s no greeting card, what is there?
There is me.
I have to be my own greeting card. And to do that, I have to at least be able to take a compliment.
yesyesyes
The first time I try to do it, it’s pathetic.
“That is a nice color on you.”
I’m in an elevator. Just me and one other person. A nice-looking man. He’s smiling at me. Why is the guy smiling at me?
I’m notoriously bad at knowing when someone is flirting with me. Later, my friend Gordon will tell me, “Fool. He was flirting with you. He was trying to meet with your client.” “Meet with your client” is Gordon-speak for getting laid. See, the client is my—
Moving on.
I stare at this nice-looking man who maybe wants a client meeting. Confused. He raises an eyebrow.
Speak, Shonda, speak.
Finally I get it together.
“What?”
That’s what I say to him. And my “what” is not a cute, flirty two-syllable up-talk-at-the-end “Wha-aaat?” My “what” is a flat construction-worker-get-back-to-work grunty “WHAT.”
The potential client-meeter looks taken aback.
“That is a nice color on you, I said.”
I look down at my dress. It’s cerulean blue. I only know that it’s cerulean blue because Meryl Streep gave a breathtaking monologue on the color in The Devil Wears Prada.<
br />
I love Meryl Streep’s work. I know everyone does. But I really do. More than you. I love Meryl’s work so much that no matter what role she is playing, I’m rooting for her character. So while many people think that The Devil Wears Prada is about how mean that boss lady is, I know they are wrong. To me, it’s clear that it is a daring exposé on how hard it is to find a good assistant. Meryl, by the way? Probably knows how to take a compliment. Go Meryl and your cerulean blue.
I actually pretty much thought all of that while standing in the elevator with this man. This client-meeter. You can see why I have a hard time with small talk.
But my dress is cerulean blue and he likes it. He likes it on me.
Wait.
He said he likes it.
And I realize this is it. It’s happening. My chance.
Say it. Just say thank you. Then smile. And don’t say anything else. Don’t offer any words of apology or remorse for having the audacity to wear a dress someone could like. Just stand there, confident and bold. Like you, too, think this color is great on you.
“Thank you,” I reply.
Good. Smile, Shonda. Shut up, Shonda.
I force myself to smile. Which is where things really go wrong.
I think maybe my mouth is really dry or I’m nervous or I am so determined to do this right that my smile comes out . . . well, terrifying.
Like a Buffalo Bill smile. Not the cowboy Buffalo Bill. The Buffalo Bill from The Silence of the Lambs who made you put the lotion on your skin or else you’d get the hose again.
That smile. A horrifying, stretched, ghoulish clown face is what he must be seeing because now this nice guy who was probably flirting with me moments earlier is pressing into the corner of the elevator away from me like I have become a zombie who wants to eat his face.
So instead of leaving it alone . . . Instead of being all, “Whatever, do better next time” . . . Instead of letting a chicken bone be a chicken bone, I try to explain to this poor man.
“That was freaky, right? The face? I was smiling. But I was totally not doing it right because I say yes to compliments now but I’m still not used to it and you are kind of the first one, the test case, and I wasn’t expecting it here in this elevator, you know, ha ha, so when you said the nice thing about the color, which is cerulean blue by the way, I just kinda—”
DING.
And the doors open and the really nice cute guy who likes this color on me runs for his life from the crazy lady in the elevator. To my credit, I don’t chase after him and continue trying to explain. Believe me, I want to. But I can’t. I am on my way to my gynecologist’s office.
Dr. Chein needs to meet with my client.
A half hour later, Dr. Chein (well, I call her Connie because I say that I must be on a first-name basis with anyone who gets to be inside me), Connie, is down between my thighs; my feet are up in stirrups. She’s got her whole speculum swab thing going on and right now she’s shining a light right up my vajayjay looking at who the hell knows what. Maybe she will find my dignity in there.
“You have a good uterus!” Connie exclaims.
I push myself up to rest on my elbows and look down at her.
“Thank you, Connie,” I say. Then I smile. Then I don’t say anything else.
Not to brag or anything but that is how it’s done, folks.
yesyesyes
As the weeks roll by, this part—thank you, smile, shut up—gets easier. It takes some practice but I slowly start to get better at it.
Thank you, smile, shut up.
And what happens is, when I give myself permission to just hear the compliments and not apologize for the compliments or brush them off or negate the compliments?
I start to appreciate the compliments.
The compliments mean something to me.
More important? The fact that someone paused to take the time to give me a compliment means something to me.
No one is obligated to compliment you.
They do it out of kindness.
They do it because they want to.
They do it because they believe the compliment they are offering.
So when you negate someone’s compliment, you are telling them they are wrong. You’re telling them they wasted their time. You are questioning their taste and judgment.
You are insulting them.
If someone wants to compliment you, let them.
But that’s not enough. That’s not, I am starting to realize, even the point.
It’s like the Wonder Woman pose.
Thank you, smile, shut up is good. It’s good for you.
But it’s a pose.
It’s a fake-it-until-you-make-it.
It’s not real.
I can stand and pose like Wonder Woman all day long but that doesn’t make me Wonder Woman. Because when her hands came off her hips and she walked away, Wonder Woman never said to her friend, “No, gosh, I’m not a hero. The way the world got saved was totally just luck. I hardly did anything. I mean, if I didn’t have the lasso and these bracelets, I’d be totally lost . . . I’m mean, I’m just a six-foot-tall Amazon girl with a dream.”
Wonder Woman would kill that version of herself. She’d run over that meek, chaste Wonder Woman embarrassment with her invisible plane.
Wonder Woman does not fake it.
Wonder Woman is a study in badassery.
It’s a word.
Badassery.
I know it is a word because I just typed it twice, and when my computer asked if I wanted to ignore it or add it to my dictionary? I chose add it to my dictionary. A word that is in the dictionary is definitively a word.
Badassery.
It’s a word. The dictionary kinda sorta said so.
Badassery:
1. (noun) the practice of knowing one’s own accomplishments and gifts, accepting one’s own accomplishments and gifts and celebrating one’s own accomplishments and gifts; 2. (noun) the practice of living life with swagger : SWAGGER (noun or verb) a state of being that involves loving oneself, waking up “like this” and not giving a crap what anyone else thinks about you. Term first coined by William Shakespeare.
Wonder Woman is not faking it. Wonder Woman means it. Wonder Woman is all swagger and badassery.
Compliment Wonder Woman and she’d be all, “Yeah, I’m a hero. Yeah, I saved the world. What’s next?”
Wonder Woman isn’t worried that her friend is going to feel bad. Wonder Woman isn’t concerned people will think that she thinks she’s better than they are.
Because guess what?
When it comes to using a lasso and magic bracelets and flying an invisible plane? Wonder Woman is better than they are. She’s freaking Wonder Woman. Have you seen her boots?
If Serena Williams tells a reporter something like, “I am the best tennis player you will see in your lifetime,” I am betting she isn’t worried that people will think she’s better than they are at tennis. Because she’s SERENA WILLIAMS.
That’s swagger. That is badassery.
Want more examples?
Do you think Oprah doesn’t know she’s the best talk show host ever? Do you think that she stays awake at night worried people think she thinks she’s the best? No. And Audra McDonald and her record-setting six Tony Awards cannot possibly show up to rehearsal nervous that someone will think she believes she is a better Broadway performer, right?
I feel like Julia Child swaggered her booty off.
Taylor Swift. All kinds of young badassery.
Bey. Malala. Mo’ne Davis. The first female Army Rangers. Misty Copeland.
Just saying.
And I think this is the thing: everyone’s got some greatness in them.
You do. That girl over there does. That guy to the left has some. But in order to really mine it, you have to own it. You have to grab hold of it. You have to believe it.
Serena’s not worried her friend is gonna feel bad she’s not as good at tennis as Serena is. You know why? Because in order
to be as good as Serena, you have to decide that your goal is that NO ONE is going to be as good as you are at tennis.
Then you have to make it true.
And you have to be okay with being better than everyone else.
One of the most surprising things about Grey’s Anatomy’s becoming a big hit was how unhappy it made me.
How scared and sad and nervous. And ashamed.
My father used to tell us, “The only obstacle to your success is your own imagination.” He said it so much that I hear his voice sometimes in my sleep.
Of course he was right.
But once success came, I did not know what to make of it. Many of my friends were struggling writers. Suddenly I was no longer one of them. I was on the outside looking in. I was unsure of what this change would mean. I wanted everything to stay the same.
I didn’t feel like it was okay to celebrate. It’s fine to be competitive when you are all on the same playing field but when you are the only one allowed in the game . . .
I took my trophies and I tucked them in the back of a cabinet and I didn’t talk about the show with anyone who didn’t work on the show. Ever. If someone brought it up, I shrugged it off. Ducked my head. Waved my hand.
No, don’t look at me. This lasso? These bracelets? They’re nothing.
I was so excited about my job. I was in love with television. In love with the magic of it. The pace, the excitement. The creativity. I wrote, “INTERIOR OPERATING ROOM—DAY,” and they built an operating room. Magic.
The day after the OR was completed, I spent the entire afternoon in that operating room alone, playing. It was the pantry all over again.
I grabbed paddles and yelled, “Clear!”
I waved my arms and shouted, “Damn it, Richard, we have to save him! Clamp!”
Dream come true.
But when I wasn’t at work, it was like it didn’t exist. I shoved it all down. It was like this dirty little secret. The phrase “hide your light under a bushel” comes to mind. And the more I shoved it down, the more dirty it seemed. The unhappier I got.
I did not know how to celebrate my success in the face of my friends’ continued struggles. I worried that they would think I thought that I was a better writer than they were. I put a lot of food on top of it trying to deal with this problem. And by the way? Fatness made for a really nice balance. Fat and successful seemed much less threatening.
Year of Yes Page 14