Dear Tina,
I am a strong-minded woman who has a healthy appreciation for other strong-minded women like yourself. You have always stuck out for me for many reasons and I have decided to continue my lengthy stay in Panera (while stealing Starbucks wifi through the wall) and write you a love letter of sorts. I adore you because you’re outspoken. You’re brunette (not yellow). You’re smart. You use your powers of wit and humor for good – not evil and at the end of the day, I just plain look up to you.
As a kid, I spent most every weekend with my Mimi. She’s quite the firecracker and doesn’t take shit from nobody. I love her fiercely and she opened my little world up to many things… Music from the ’50s and ’60s, garage sales, Star Trek, the beauty of a good mystery, and most of all: comedy. As refined as my Mimi can be, she loves to laugh. We would lay in bed together and watch MADtv and SNL, waiting for our favorite skits and snickering in the glow of her little bedroom TV.
I got older, and like every other kid, I quit going to Mimi’s house every weekend because I had more “important” things to do, like be a hoodrat at the local skating rink. But, even through all my awkward junior high years, I never quit watching SNL. And that’s how I first came to know you and appreciate you as a woman and a comedian. Well, and then you did Mean Girls and my affection for you was pretty much set in stone. I can only say this simply: Mean Girls is perfect. Dear God, thank you so much for that movie. If anything it will make parenting a bit easier for me down the line.
Just kidding. I plan on fully parenting my children and only using pop culture references when times are DESPERATE.
But in all seriousness – Mean Girls is what solidified you for me. To make something as good and real as that movie, you have to be a student of people. And to be a student of people, you can’t be egotistical. You have to be open-minded to everything and everyone. (Maybe all the great comedians are A+ students of people? Interesting thought.)
Anyway, I have watched you over the years – enjoying everything you have done from Weekend Update to Baby Mama and everything in between. But yet again, in a Mean Girls-esque fashion, my love for you has reached a new level. You see, I just recently packed up all my shit and moved from Denton, Texas (outside of Dallas) to Greenville, North Carolina (very, very far from Texas). The drive was two days worth of open interstate highway and endless pine trees. In the craze of moving, I had no time to create a day-long playlist in iTunes, so I instead opted the audio book route. My mom treated me to Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand and Bossypants by You. (At the time, “treated” didn’t seem like the right descriptor for Atlas Shrugged, but surprisingly I really enjoyed it.) I listened to you first, and it was like you were in the car talking to me, telling my your life story. It made me love you even more than I already did and for the first time, you inspired me in a new way. After listening to Bossypants, I want to be a more open person, a harder working person, and someone who keeps going after the things that bring them joy.
Side note: I loved these American Express ads.
Tina Fey, thank you for being you. You are awesome, and it’s been a pleasure to follow your career and learn from you. I don’t plan on stopping anytime soon, so you better not stop either! You are an inspiration to women everywhere, just by being you.
And as all good love letters must end, I promise you the following:
- I will move forward in my own life saying “Yes, and…”
- I will do my best not to fuss over details or try to make everything perfect (including this blog post…)
- I will do my thing, and not care if people like it.
- I shall continue “blorfting” through life and will never ever ever let anyone call me the c-word because I have parents who love me and I am not the product of a completely dysfunctional home. Only partially dysfunctional. (But we make it work.)
And now I must go, because as Panera real estate goes I have well out-stayed my welcome and am getting very dirty looks from the worker who has meandered by my table twice now.
All my love,
P.S. I found out later that Shelton has never seen Mean Girls. Blasphemy – I know! We are watching it tonight, with face masks on.