My Life as a Twinkie

I hate twinkies. No, not the Hostess brand ones that could survive a nuclear war, but those chattering, annoying, so-much-makeup-wearing, "Oh-I-broke-a-nail"-complaining, captain-of-the-football-team-dating "I'm-better-than-you" 's. All through high school I have loathed their false demenors and their cruelty to the unfortunately "uncool" peasants such as myself. Now, in college, I can see that they have realized their twinkie-ness is no longer needed to maintain their "cool" status. Even a supreme twinkie who shall remain nameless, a short little blonde who ridiculed me in every class I had the misfortune to share with her, gushed, "Oh, hi, Robin!" when I passed her on the stairs outside the cafeteria. Hmm. She remembered my name. Well, good for her. Beause I'll never forget hers after all the hell she put me through in high school.
Now, as the old adage says, you cannot make a judgement until you have walked a mile in that person's shoes. Well, I have not only worn those shoes, they have given me blisters. Let me explain. February 10th was my dad's wedding. He wanted all of his children (biological and soon-to-be-step-children included) to be part of the wedding party, so that made me a bridesmaid. I thought it would be kind of like prom; I got to wear a pretty dress, have a fancy hairstyle, and go to a dance afterwards. What I didn't realize was that I was hovering dangerously close to the undrawn line between slightly-weird-but-okay and total twinkiedom. It all started when my dad told me when my appointment to get my manicure was. Um, a manicure? I looked down at my bitten nails and decided that it was probably a good idea, though I was a little wary of the twinkie aura this was giving off. Anyway, I went to the beauty parlor and the lady filed and shaped my nails and fixed my cuticles and stuff, and it looked really nice. It didn't look twinkish at all; it just looked healthy, which was fine by me. Then she took out a small box which looked like it was filled with fingernail clippings. I realized they were fake nails. Oh crap. They had plans for me. I knew that there was nothing I could do, as I had promised my dad that I would go along with this manicure thing. I voiced my complaints to the lady as she began the horrific procedure of putting on my new talons. "I hate fake nails," I said simply.
"Why?" she asked me.
"Because they're fake," I said. "I like my old nails."
"But everybody else in the bridal party is getting them." What she didn't say was CONFORM! YOU'LL BE A TWINKIE YET! JOIN ME ON THE DARK SIDE!
Shocked, I replied, "But why do I have to look just like everybody else?"
"It isn't just like everybody else, love, it's just so that everybody looks nice."
"But nobody will be looking at my hands. Besides, it's just for one day. I'll have to have these for a long time afterwards, plus the wedding isn't for two days, so I have to put up with them until then. I have chores to do. I'll just break them."
She looked shocked. As if women actually did CHORES and didn't just sit there and look pretty! "Dear, you want your hands to look nice, don't you?"
I didn't say it, but I was thinking, well, I want my breasts to look nice too. Should I just get fake ones? Hmm, my nails aren't long enough. I'll get fake ones. See the insane parallelisms?
Instead, I said, "I don't really care what my hands look like."
She stared at me like I had two heads. "But other people do. What if you're getting a job interview and the interviewer sees your ugly nails?"
"My nails can look nice without plastic," I muttered. What does she mean 'but other people do'? So I'm at a job interview and the interviewer says, "Sorry, but we've hired somebody with perfect nails. Sure, your skills are over the top, and you would have been better for the job, but I just can't hire a person with ugly nails." What a sad, strange world we live in.
After a long pause, I felt the need to complain again. "They're just so fake," I said, scowling.
"Your hair color's fake," the beautician commented, noticing my auburn coloring over my normally brown hair. At the time, I couldn't think of a comeback, but I realized that I didn't dye my hair for me to look prettier, but I did it just for a change. I looked just as pretty with brown hair. I just was trying things out. Was I attempting to convince people that auburn was my natural color? No. So I wasn't faking anything. Even after I got my nails and everybody commented on how nice they looked, I immediately said, "They're fake. I don't like them." Sure, they looked "nice", but they just weren't me.
The day after the wedding (despite the beautician's advice to cut them short and let the rest grow out naturally) I ripped them all off as far as I could get them. The glue was strong, and it hurt like hell, but I was me again. I survived the war against twinkie-ness, but I will have the battle scars for a few weeks more, while the shrapnel of what plastic I couldn't chip off grows out.