I am known best for my authentic, vulnerable, soul-searching writing. That’s a fair assessment. But also, I sometimes take the shortcut.

Like today. Today I want to be a babe. I want to feel like, and objectively earn, legitimate babe status. I’ve been walking the perimeter of the issue for awhile now, and I’m just no longer afraid to admit it. Go ahead and gasp at the vapidness, it’s fine.

Maybe it’s aging, maybe it’s all the body altering surgeries, maybe it’s the years I lost to disease, but I want to feel desirable in the real world. I’d say I want to feel that way again but I’m not sure I ever felt that way at any point before this.

There is something about closing in on my forties that both propels me toward babe status and makes me feel blocked off from it completely. For example, I have these wrinkles around my eyes when I smile now. I love them. They’re cute. But then there’s other obvious signs of aging that are decidedly not cute. How can I be both of these things?

It feels really strange to actively lose a race I didn’t intend on running. I didn’t mean to get old, it just happened. I didn’t mean to fall out of the young and cute category, it just happened. So that leaves me with having to embrace the “you look good for your age” gray area we all wander into eventually.

Don’t get me wrong, I have zero desire to be in my twenties again. I don’t even need to revisit my early thirties. I’m just watching a door close and wondering if it’s too late to ever get that feeling.

It should be said that don’t want to be hot for the sake of being hot. I want to move through the world in a way that is grounded in confidence. Arguably, one could say that confidence should come from a deeper, richer source. Good for them. But for me, right now, I still want to feel that energy.

Just because I’m getting older doesn’t mean I’ve grown out of wanting to feel fit and cute or even sexy. I don’t want to stop being those things. At 38, I think I finally feel like I’ve developed the character and personality to actually shore up those great attributes.

I’ve become a woman of confidence and strength. Throw in power too (just not in the gross ego way). I want my outside to match my inside. I don’t want the world to limit me or stop seeing me as the person I know I’ve become.

That leads me to this: I want to be a babe. A woman who is strong, confident, funny, and nice. A woman you want to be around when she walks in the room, with a body you want when she walks out.

Give ‘Em Hell