Anyway, as a lifelong friend of guys, it bothers me that, when society hears the term Guys’ Girl, people automatically assume the woman in question is a bitch who can’t be trusted, or a not incredibly attractive girl who drinks too much Bud Light and isn’t above mud wrestling in a backyard kiddie pool. In reality, there are several types of Guys’ Girls—and none deserve the kind of resentment and societal mythology they sometimes get. Here are a few primary GG archetypes with, as always, several iterations of gray in between.
Guys’ Girl Type A: The Sports Fanatic
This is the girl who loves, loves, loves sports, and it’s a legitimate love. She usually played a sport growing up, maybe had a sports fanatic for a father or a brother, or maybe she even played at the college level. (Even now, in my midthirties, I still have a girl crush on any woman who was All-State anything.) These are girls who don’t just enjoy the game but actually have a working knowledge of plays, and scores, and strategies, and coaches’ names, and who does what on each team. Look at Erin Andrews: there’s no questioning that she has a genuine love for sports, and she’s not out there trying to be cute (even though she is gorgeous). Eventually, this love of sports becomes less present in many women’s lives—I mean, you can really only rep SUPER hard for UConn basketball for, like, four months a year, then you gotta give it a rest. Same goes for Red Sox fans who have Red Sox—themed weddings. Man, that’s gross.
Guys’ Girl Type B: The Other Kind of Sports Fanatic
This girl is typically just a fan of, well, whoever is hot. She’s into sports because she thinks guys are into sports, and she uses her knowledge to manipulate her way into their hearts. She has Lakers jerseys that are actually dresses, and Cowboys jerseys that are pink and cinched at the waist. She loves to start fake arguments with guys at bars: “What are you talking about? Trestman is a pussy and their offense is shit.” She wants guys to think, “Wow, a hot chick who loves sports and has a dirty mouth! DREAM.” This type of Guys’ Girl is simply mimicking male behavior in hopes of attracting a man, which, to be honest, does work. She knows just enough to get into guys’ inner circles, which puts her at an advantage because she’s usually the only girl, and thus gets all the attention. Well played.
Guys’ Girl Type C: The Drink Mule
Most of us are drinkers, but THE DRINK MULE is a type of Guys’ Girl who tends to fade away with time. You can’t be this girl after you’ve hit your thirties because you will either get alcohol bloat or die. Everyone knew that one girl in college who could pound drinks for hours with the guys. She was cute, but she didn’t turn heads. She’s the first one to drunkenly throw herself down a Slip ’N Slide or jump in the pool with all her clothes on, even if they’re cashmere and her phone is in her pocket.
She’s a guy favorite because she’s a “good time,” and she doesn’t cry when she’s drunk, like the rest of us. (One time on Halloween I got so drunk that I couldn’t read, and for some reason that made me so sad that I had to literally be handed off between my friends Adam and Mark, who had no idea what to do with me. Eventually I stopped crying and convinced them that they should leave me at the bar, where I texted an ex at the other end of the city to come make out with me. I waited for more than three minutes, which in drunk time is an eternity, before jumping into an Uber and passing out at home. The ex was less than thrilled he’d driven from Malibu to Koreatown to discover me nowhere to be found, but, oh well. I’m sassy! Happy Halloween!) BUT it’s impossible to sustain this life in a graceful way.
Guys’ Girl Type D: The Hot Chick Dudes Claim Is “Like a Sister” but You Know They Secretly Jerk Off to Her Instagram Pictures
These are the hot Guys’ Girls. This is more of a subset because the only reason this girl usually hangs around the guys is because the guys want to have sex with her (which, unfortunately, has a major impact on female self-esteem), and this makes her feel good about herself. There is often some sort of weird, unspoken competition going among her dude-crew about who can be the better friend to her. They know, like a shark smelling blood, that at some point she will be emotionally vulnerable; she’ll need a strong trapezius to cry on. So they stick around. And she sticks around because, hey, they’re trying sooooooo uncomfortably, embarrassingly hard. Maybe she even buys it! P.S. If her name is Kelsey, I guarantee they’re all trying to fuck her. There are no ugly Kelseys.
Guys’ Girl Type E: The Stoner
This girl always has weed. Hence, she’s ALWAYS DOWN to chill and eat, and watch a movie and eat, and drive around and eat, and walk in the park and eat, and go to the mall and eat.… Point is, she loves to hang. And eat. And watch Faces of Death until three in the morning. Guys dig this because there is no hassle. She often ends up ski instructing on a mountain or makes a hard life left turn and now has three kids and lives in rural Colorado, with her whole family in Teva sandals.
Guys’ Girl Type F: The Funny Girl
Being able to tap into what men think is funny is a winning strategy. Humor can win over a grumpy dude, a hot dude, or a nerdy dude, and it makes men feel at ease. By the same token, we all know that men with a stunning sense of humor tend to attract women who are way out of their league in the looks department—women dig nothing more than a deeply funny man (having money doesn’t hurt, either). But when it comes to funny women, sure, men appreciate your scathing wit and dick jokes, but that doesn’t necessarily make them want to sleep with you. Which is fine—the friend zone isn’t always a bad place to be.
Do Guys’ Girls have a different kind of Girl Logic than other women? Not necessarily. But we may have learned to adopt certain elements of men’s ego-driven single-mindedness because, well, we want some of that power, too. On some level we’ve embraced the idea that if we could only act and think more like guys—move through life like a bull-headed plow and override our always-questioning Girl Logic—we might be rewarded like one of them. For years and years, decisions, laws, and social standards were all decided by white men in a board room, a bar, or a strip club, and if you could tolerate men drinking, smoking, and treating women like garbage, then you, too, could be tolerated in their work environments: “Let’s have the board meeting at a strip club!” “Awesome, sir, I love other women’s private parts and watching married men get lap dances. Great strategy to fix the Cranston account.”
Traditionally speaking, the common perception of a Guys’ Girl is a woman who’s into “man stuff” like sports, drinking, murder, mass quantities of meat, and deep-fried fart jokes. Men were the first people who got to do anything exciting like sports, hunting, filmmaking, painting, and talking openly about taking a shit, so for a long time everything was a guy thing (except, maybe, sewing and child rearing). Hence, when I was growing up, being a girl involved in a “guy thing” always seemed cooler. Being a woman participating in a male-dominated activity meant one thing: you were “good enough” to run with the guys. Being as skilled and ballsy as the guys lent a girl a subtle air of superiority.
I became a Guys’ Girl partly because I wanted to feel superior, and partly by default. Growing up, I was never part of a group of girls. Maybe I didn’t fit in as a result of other girls’ GL: “If I don’t hang out with the most popular girls, then I won’t be popular, and if I’m not popular I won’t meet any boys.” I wasn’t necessarily considered dorky or cool, though; I was just… there. I was never the first invited to a birthday party and I was never the friend people saved a seat for. The weird memory-scar of never feeling quiiiiiite good enough for the girls around me has played out in different ways, one of which is my desire to relate to women through stand-up. Part of why my comedy is so girl-centric is because I get what it’s like to feel left out; my shows are my way of inviting everyone to sit with me.
If Girl Logic is a thought process that takes the past into account as a way to shape and inform the future, my GL has done its best to repeatedly warn me that women are going to, well, dislike me. I try to ignore that voice and be kind to other women anyway because the close girlfriends I
do have, I really love. Like my best friend since I was three, Michelle. We’re both often misunderstood, both challenged by men (she was often smarter than guys, or maybe her delivery needed work, who knows), and we both grew up with an insatiable curiosity about life beyond the Dallas county line.
We bought fake IDs together, snuck into bars together, threw parties, and colluded to cover it up when Michelle dented her car (because she was and continues to be the worst driver in the world; you can’t deny it now Michelle, it’s in print!). We even had jobs together. One time, to make money, we had the grand idea to drive up and down the Dallas Tollway, go through the toll and take all the money from the coin return that no one ever bothered to claim. Problem with that idea was that we had to pay to go through the toll in the first place. At the end of the day? We lost about eight dollars. She was the math genius; she should have seen that coming.
Michelle is the friend I throw my arm around and say “my boy’s wicked smaaht,” then I like to lick her face to annoy her. It’s what sisters do. Michelle went to Tufts, the London School of Economics, and has a master’s degree in something important that has nothing to do with comedy. After years of working for the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, consulting for the OECD in Paris, and more, she settled with her now-wife, Grace, in Austin. She’s hiked glaciers, hitchhiked across Australia, and learned three languages. All without stopping once to question what people thought of her. To say that I’m proud of her is an understatement.
Jodi is another close girlfriend. She’s ten years older than me (I’m sorry, you are!) and was the first woman who befriended me in comedy. Before I was anyone in the industry, Jodi was my friend. I remember watching the Joan Rivers documentary A Piece of Work, and there was this tearful interview Joan gave about a toxic manager. She eventually cut him out of her life but admitted that, in doing so, she was basically losing the connection to an entire part of her past that only he remembered. For me, Jodi is that lifeline (she’s not toxic, though). Without her I lose an entire chunk of my twenties, the men I dated, the shitty shows she and I did, the horrible comics who started with us, she’s the only one I have left to cross-reference these experiences with. Loyalty is hard to come by in Los Angeles, and so is compassion. Jodi is talented and beautiful, and has always been there for me. She’s the kind of friend where, when something horrible happens, I can’t wait to tell her so we can make fun of it together. She makes the pain of working in comedy funny.
Andriana, another close girlfriend, is someone I met during a Semester at Sea, a life-changing experience I’ll talk about more later. She was… tan. With bleached stripes in her brown hair. She had a lower back tattoo in Chinese and was from LA, obviously. But she was fucking smart. She went to Berkeley, which I thought was so cool—she looked like the girl who would steal your boyfriend, but she secretly had morals and a major in political philosophy. She had the kind of scathing observational skills that made me say, “Oh my God, I can’t believe you are saying this out loud because I’m thinking it quietly.” And I think part of me was just so pumped that a girl who looked so cool and was so popular wanted to hang out with me so much. The day we met, she walked up to me and was like, “You’re that funny girl.” I was like, “You’re that hot girl” (I thought that, but didn’t say it), and a friendship was born of drunk trips and ghosting on parties to go off and eat together on our own. She is the friend who will take a vacation with you even if you have to work the whole time, and on more than one occasion she has pretended to be my publicist. She is also my girliest friend: the one I call to ask if an outfit works. She would never call me for fashion advice, and if I ever tried to give it to her, I would imagine she would casually sniff, “No, my outfit works, but thanks.” She knows what’s in style, which restaurants have hot chefs—she is my Harper’s Bazaar and Zagat guide in heels, and she’s not above going as a “sexy nurse” for Halloween, even in her thirties, because she doesn’t give a fuck.
The common denominator among my women friends is consistency. They show up, they care, they don’t judge, and they all knew me before I became who I am today. Being alone with any of these women makes me feel like, together, we are enough.
Growing up, I didn’t always feel that way. In fact, it wasn’t until I started writing this book that I realized how lonely my childhood was. I didn’t find it painful back then, but most people don’t realize the collective pain of all those tiny social paper cuts until they’re adults. So many of my contemporaries have faced down darker demons; what right did I have to complain, or be sad? I wasn’t raped, or raised in poverty, or kicked out of the house at fourteen. My trials and tribulations—being raised by a single mom, bouncing from school to school to school, never quite feeling like I’d found my place—seemed to pale in comparison, so I tucked them away.
I also used them as motivation. That feeling, as an adult, of hoping people know and care that I exist manifested itself in small ways. For instance, when I signed autographs, I wrote “ILIZA” in a big blocky print, instead of an illegible cursive scribble. That way, people would see my name and know that someone had asked for my signature, that I’d been there, that I mattered. I still do it to this day.
Anyway, on the “uninvited” front: When I was sixteen, I went on a group trip to Spain. I was the only kid from Dallas (all the other ones were from New York and Los Angeles). Parents, don’t send your kids abroad with kids from either of these cities. They have money, an appetite for drugs and booze, and, at sixteen, are worse than your average twenty-one-year-old. Jesus Christ—one of the girls brought a whole bag of dildos. At sixteen, all I wanted was a T-shirt from Abercrombie, and this girl had a BAG OF DILDOS. Who sold them to her?
Our whole program of about twenty-five kids headed into Madrid one afternoon. After congregating at a cafe for lunch, my roommate Amanda and the other “cool” kids all plopped down at a table together, squeezing me out and leaving me standing there awkwardly alone. Amanda offered, “Oh, you can just go sit over there; we can hang after lunch!” pointing to a table of dorks that none of us knew. My Girl Logic began screaming, “But… if you don’t hang out with the cool girls, you can’t meet the cool guys!!!” (Hey, at sixteen, nothing mattered more to me than meeting the cool boys, obviously.)
Not wanting to show that their flippant casting me aside had cut me so deeply, I disappeared into the street. I was fucking starving, and pissed, and hurt. My Girl Logic was still screaming at me, “If you aren’t friends with these bad girls or cool guys, you will spend your summer alone! You’ll go back to Texas miserable and ostracized, with no new friends and knowing that absolutely no one knows you’re cool!”
I think being rejected by women from a young age built up my desire to connect with women as I grew older. As an adult, I get it. There have been plenty of women who’ve been drawn to me as friends that I just… wasn’t into. Nice enough, cool enough, but we didn’t click. But when you’re a kid with limited social opportunities, family drama, and fragile-ish self-esteem, feeling rejected doesn’t just sting; it makes you question your entire being, your purpose in life. And, growing up, every year there was at least one or two girls I desperately wanted to be friends with who wanted nothing to do with me. So I started hanging out with the guys instead. What was my alternative—befriend local wildlife and talk to trees, or sit with the dorks who were actually on this trip to, like, learn? Come on.
Of course, hanging out almost exclusively with dudes creates its own special variety of petty dramas, especially when you’re young. You’re bound to develop some crushes on them, and the lines between friendship and romance can easily start to blur. Growing up in Texas I knew I wasn’t pretty enough to be with the hot jock, the class clown, or the quiet bad boy type. (Do those exist anymore? We all know how Christian Slater in Heathers turned out.) Taking a cue from my divorced parents, I couldn’t be with someone just like me. Back then that meant no class clowns, and today it means no comedians.
I mean, don’t get me wr
ong; I love comedians. Sometimes I watch comedy and get turned on. Not so much by the comedian, mind you, but by their act. If I could fuck their act—if I could ball up all the brilliance and timing and make it into a sentient being to be intimate with—I gladly would. Some of my girlfriends have suggested that because I’m “strong and outspoken,” I need a strong man: a professional athlete or a celebrity. And I remind them that most starting quarterbacks aren’t into wandering around Hollywood in their pajamas looking for cheap Korean foot spas. Plus, I take issue with the phrase “strong woman.” What does that even mean? Am I giving birth, roadside, fixing a flat tire while I hold the car up with one finger? Am I pulling a Mack Truck with my teeth? I think being a strong woman has just come to mean that you make money, have your shit together, and refuse to apologize for either of those things. I doubt Elon Musk would look at my single-car garage and income tax statement and think, “Nah, too strong.”
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