61 pages 2 hours read

Tina Fey

Bossypants

Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 2011

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Chapters 10-12

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 10 Summary: “The Secrets of Mommy’s Beauty”

Sardonically remarking that readers bought her book to learn about her beauty regimen, Fey shares her "Twelve Tenets of Looking Amazing Forever," which turn traditional beauty tips on their heads. For example, under “Form Good Beauty Habits Early,” Fey shares that as a child, she stood “in front of [the] giant air conditioner and let it blast [her] hair dry” (95). Under “The Right Undergarments Are an Essential Part of Your Silhouette,” she describes the time her mother took her to JCPenney and made her try a bra on over her clothes. “Skin Care, Skin Care, Skin Care!” contains a plethora of increasingly complex acronyms, concluding with her description of the teenage pimple-popping routine that constituted her “rigorous daily massage” (96). “Space Lasers” suggests that “[a]s you age, you may want to pay someone to shoot lasers at your face” (97), while her eighth tip discusses how she found the post-high school hair style that “let people see the real me that was inside—a mother of four who was somehow also a virgin” (98). Next, in “When It Comes to Fashion, Find What Works for You and Stick with It,” Fey explains how she solidified her look at age 19: “[o]versize T-shirts, bike shorts, and wrestling shoes” (101), complete with a fanny pack “[t]o prevent the silhouette from being too baggy” (102).