Hello, dear internet friends,

Whew. The end of the year is here, and I am tired. While I’ve always been a fan of New Year’s and setting goals for the future—there are some big things I hope to accomplish and share with you in 2024!—as the calendar turns over, I also hope to give myself a restful pause before diving into what’s to come. A moment to appreciate where I’m at now—and how far I’ve traveled to get here.

One of my goals for the future of this site is make space for other girls and women to share their perspectives and wisdom. I’d also like to bring some of my old work out of the archives, a la Taylor Swift’s vault tracks. As I mentioned in my October announcement, the heart and spirit of Fab Gal Media comes from the blog I started as a teen, when I began to write and dream about helping other girls like me. While that original blog has fallen into disrepair, what I wrote still shines. I’m proud of the work I did back then, and I’d like to give some of that writing a second life by dusting it off and sharing it with you here.

As I was going through blogs on my old site a while ago, I came across one of my favorite lines I’ve ever written: “You were born to stand out . . . and if you let yourself, you won’t have to worry about finding your place because you will always be in it.” So good! It feels weird to be so boldly proud of something I wrote—I am understandably and unfortunately my own worst critic—but I wrote that so long ago, the words feel like they belong to someone else. I was seventeen and just starting college, and it was the end of sorority rush week. In hindsight, I wish I’d journaled or kept more notes about rush. It was fascinating to observe (and disorienting to experience). Each day was like an audition, but as opposed to trying out for a sports team or theatre production—where you’re ostensibly being assessed as objectively as possible on a skill you’ve refined—at rush, it felt like you were being judged simply on whether you were cool or likable enough to become one of them. (If I remember correctly, the sorority houses did openly share a rubric of the qualities they were considering in each candidate. But that didn’t change how it felt.) As I finished that week, I was grappling with the challenges of fitting in—and the power to be found in standing out as your true self. And that inspired this blog:

Friday, August 22, 2008

Rise and Shine! Happy Friday, Fab Gals! I don’t know how many of you have started school yet, but the first week is always hard, isn’t it? Especially if you’re new there, which is the case for me. Being in a new environment and not knowing anyone very well can be really intimidating, especially when you are just trying to make a good impression and find where you fit in. That’s how I have been spending my week – trying to find my group. It’s really funny how, when we’re trying to make new friends, we spend our time seeing how we match up. Do they look like me? Have the same interests? Same personality? When you’re trying so hard to fit in, it can be easy to get caught up trying to be like the people you want to impress. It seems natural that if you can seem cool and be “one of them,” things will be good, because you’ll have your place. Something you should know about me: I am a little different. Not in a freaky way, like I wear cat pajamas to school or whatever, but I am definitely my own person. We Fab Gals, we’re born to stand out, you know? And this whole week, I have been trying to push myself into place, to fit into this group or that one, and truthfully, I haven’t been all that happy, because I haven’t really gotten to be myself. Like I said, when we think about groups of people, we think about how they are the same. But think about one person, someone you really admire. Don’t you think about what’s unique about them? Those things that make you different, those are the things that make you impressive. That, and having respect for yourself and everyone else. Being yourself means not everyone is going to like you. That’s just the way it goes. It’s like what Coco Chanel said, “In order to be irreplaceable, one must always be different.” You were born to stand out, FG, and if you let yourself, you won’t have to worry about finding your place because you will always be in it. I hope school is going alright for you, and that you get your chance to stand out. If you need me, remember that I can always be reached here, by email . . . or at The Fab Gal Myspace. xoxo The Fab Gal

I still agree wholeheartedly with what I wrote back then. (Except for the part about cat pajamas. Not sure why that was my metric for being “freaky.” Sounds like something from a Disney Channel show or teen movie—both of which heavily influenced my worldview growing up!) Embracing what makes you unique beats squeezing yourself to fit in any day. But what I’d like to add is a reminder that you will get so many chances throughout your lifetime to tweak or even redefine what it means to be you. In the context of growing up, and school settings where people divide themselves into groups, deciding who you are—and getting others to see you how you want to be seen—can feel both intensely important and excruciatingly rigid. As if there is a singular, unchanging you that you need to excavate and polish up for all to see. But every new chapter gives you a chance to grow. Change. Evolve. Find your place, outgrow it, and build a new foundation for yourself with the pieces that fit best, leaving the rest behind.

And that’s freeing to realize, but also scary. I think it’s easier to believe that once you’ve found yourself, the search is over. It isn’t. The search is life. I never could have anticipated all the versions of me I would become and shed to get to who I am today. But as I step into the new year, I am saying a silent “thank you” to each one for bringing me to the best chapter of my life yet.

I hope that 2024 brings you the steadiness of embracing who you are (and who you’ve been) . . . and readiness to step into who you’ve yet to become.

xoxo

Marie