A Study in Sexy

I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating: the universe has a hell of a sense of humor, and usually its jokes are at our expense. And the biggest cosmic joke it’s played on me in the past ten years stares back at me from the mirror every day. If you looked up “tomboy” in the dictionary, you’d see a picture of an eight-year-old Cat tagging along after her big brother while he stirred up havoc with the other boys in the neighborhood. Sledding down the big slope behind our neighbor’s house, riding our bikes down the huge hill that threatened to toss you onto the pavement if you lost control, three-on-three basketball, goalie for hockey and soccer, scraped knees and bloody noses, that’s what little Cat was made of. Despite my mom’s attempts to turn me into a proper little girl with my frilly church dresses and long, colorfully ribboned braids, I was happiest in hand-me-down sweatshirts and jeans and was secretly pleased when the baby-pink carpet in my bedroom faded to a dull brown. My best friend loved to play Barbies and had the whole lineup of dolls and accessories, including the Dream House but the closest I came to the pint-sized fashionista was learning to sew so I could make funky clothes for the American Girl doll whose ears I pierced with sewing pins.

Growing out of my brother’s sweatshirts and discovering that boys just weren’t for tagging around with didn’t really change my tomboyishness. Just because I suddenly wanted to date boys and be kissed and thought of as pretty, didn’t mean I was suddenly going to start liking pink. In fact, while other girls began experimenting with makeup and separating themselves from the boys, I went bare-faced and dedicated myself to sports. In high school, I had a boyfriend and designed my own prom dresses, but I also had six varsity letters and considered myself the sports-loving dude in that relationship. His best friend was a baseball player but I was the one that knew the difference between a split-finger fastball and a circle change. He loved me in dresses and skirts and I felt sexiest in a pair of zippered, ripped-up jeans with chains hanging off them. I was petite in every sense of the term and except for my long hair, there wasn’t much about me that screamed “girl”.

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