She looked perfect in those glamour shots. It was the winter of fourth grade, right at the start of the 'Mean Girl' rise, and I was steaming with jealousy. I will never forget the cold day my elementary school nemesis waltzed into Social Studies handing out little wallet-sized pictures of her Glamour Shots session to the entire class. I gave up on the pageant dreams when I realized I couldn't dance, but I still longed for GLAMOUR SHOTS. I was forever met with a firm 'NO' from my sophisticated, edgy, 'cool' mother, who wouldn't be caught dead back-combing my hair backstage in some Long Island chain hotel. I begged my mother to let me do pageants. When I was a prepubescent kid, all I EVER desired were some GLAMOUR SHOTS of my own. Glamour Shots is a chain of little stores (usually inside of suburban malls or small-town strip malls) where they do your hair and makeup (in a very Texas-pageant-girl-meets-fab-drag-queen-style), provide you with flamboyant props (boas, jewels, crowns GALORE) and take very airbrushed, very calculated and posed pictures - very popular in the 12-and-under crowd (and in the '90s). They aren't popular in Manhattan.) and don't know what Glamour Shots is, it's my honor to explain it to YOU. If you've been living under a rock (or in Manhattan. I was stewing in my own paralyzing sadness early last week, staring into the static screen of my laptop when, for some reason, my boss Emily started discussing 'Glamour Shots.' Truth be told, nothing was snapping me out of it. Well, I didn't have a one-night stand (feeling too vulnerable for that sh*t right now), but I did up my dosage of Wellbutrin (from 150 mg to 300 mg), and I am considering a dramatic hair change.Īnd the treadmill? The treadmill turns my low-grade depression into a full-blast, manic meltdown. What's more depressing than running for miles and miles and miles on a MACHINE and staying in the same place? It feels like a dark metaphor for my life. How do you snap out of a funk ( message me)? And why do we get into these funks when there's NOTHING WRONG?

I mean, what do you do with boring, low-grade depression?ĭo you up the meds? Do you run an extra mile on the treadmill in hopes of boosting the lack of serotonin in your brain? Do you cut your hair off and dye it pastel pink? Do you buy a $300 rose gold vibrator and orgasm every time you feel consumed by the sadness? Do you have a one-night stand? It's almost worse than a full-blown depressive episode because it's so subtle that it's hard to treat. Before I get into this story, I feel it's important to note that while I feel like I've made some serious personal/professional gains in the past few months, I've also had this very strange, underlying sadness sifting beneath the surface of my skin that just won't go away.

Pushpal glamour shot