Tina Fey is awesome. This is not new information. She’s hilarious, successful, and still dedicated to her family. Fey seems genuine and grounded, which is always nice to see in famous people, who I typically imagine snapping for servants on a beach in Cabo, drinking some sort of pink-colored beverage. I read her memoir (of life so far), Bossypants, like, as Mindy Kaling said, “a grown woman’s Twilight” – before I knew it, it was 5 AM, I was giggling to myself surrounded by Diet Coke cans, and my roommate had her pillow over her face, attempting to block out the light from my lamp.

Aside from being insomnia-inducing, Bossypants has some awesome nuggets of genius-wisdom about growing up, womanhood, feminism, motherhood, and women in the workplace without feeling preachy or overdone. She knows that we should have a sense of humor about this stuff while still taking it seriously.

Just to give you guys a taste, I highlighted my four favorite quotes from the books that either made me literally laugh out loud or give a second thought to something I normally don’t think about much (or both!).

At a seminar taught by the author of Queen Bees and Wannabees (the inspiration for Mean Girls), women were asked when they first felt like a grown woman and not a girl:

“Almost everyone first realized they were becoming a grown woman when some dude did something nasty to them…There were pretty much zero examples like ‘I first knew I was a woman when my mother and father took me out to dinner to celebrate my success on the debate team.’ It was mostly men yelling shit from cars. Are they a patrol sent out to let girls know they’ve crossed into puberty? If so, it’s working…I was walking home alone from school and I was wearing a dress. A dude drove by and yelled ‘Nice tits.’ Embarassed and enraged, I screamed after him ‘Suck my dick!’ Sure, it didn’t make any sense, but at least I didn’t hold in my anger.”

On men who claim “women aren’t funny”:

“Unless one of these men is my boss, it’s irrelevant…When faced with sexism or ageism or lookism or even really aggressive Buddhism, ask yourself the following question: ‘Is this person between me and what I want to do?’ If the answer is no, ignore it and move on.”

On the now-legendary sketch about Palin/Clinton:

“The sketch could have been a dumb catfight between two female candidates. What Seth and Amy wrote, however, was two women speaking out together against sexism in the campaign. In real life these women experienced different sides of the same sexism coin. People attempted to marginalize these women based on their gender. Amy’s line ‘Although it is never sexist to question female politicians’ credentials’ was basically the thesis statement for everything we did over the next six weeks. Not that anyone noticed. You all watched a sketch about feminism and you didn’t even realize it because of all the jokes. It’s like when Jessica Seinfeld puts spinach in kids’ brownies. Suckers!”

You get the idea. Fey is not only a great writer and a gifted comedian, but a smart woman who understands the importance of feminism and enacting feminist change in our society. In short: she gets it. As someone who is interested in writing and writing for comedy, I was inspired by her story and how hard she works at a job she clearly loves so much. Her passion for comedy and writing is clear, and she acknowledges that this is her dream job, and is excellent at putting things in perspective. She knows how to make fun of herself without being self-hating, and how to make fun of everybody without being rude. She’s amazingly talented, and everybody should read her book immediately for some inspiration, wisdom, insight, and most importantly, laugh-out-loud fun. Right now. What are you still doing reading this? Go get her book immediately. It’s only $13.97 on Amazon.

Becka also writes for her own blog, Becka Tells All.

Just another naked woman on the cover of a widely available magazine

In this nation so full of blatantly sexualized imagery, it’s hard not to feel numb when talking about sex. From the pretty graphic jokes that circulate through my high school (and, of this I’m sure, every other high school in America), to the nearly naked women routinely featured on widely available magazine covers, I haven’t been truly shocked by sex since I was pretty young.

In fact, virginity (or purity…what a truly terrible word) in this country is a burden. It’s something to get rid of. We are amazed when we hear that Tina Fey was still a virgin at the ancient age of 24, and wonder why people would ever in their right minds wait that long.

So, when I read an article describing how women in Turkey are paying as much as $2,000 to have their virginity restored in an operation called “hymenoplasty” I was pretty astounded.

The article reports that in Turkey, virginity is not only a respected quality, but a necessary quality for a woman to have. Losing one’s virginity before marriage (and by one, I mean members of the female gender) can mean “social alienation, forced marriage with an inappropriate match, physical abuse and even death in some cases.”

Yes, there are countries where women are still dying for having pre-marital sex. Y’know, the same thing that the same demographic in our Western nation is being overly encouraged to do. The same thing that American girls are being shamed for not doing, girls in Turkey are being ostracized for doing.

Even more upsetting to me is the fact that men who seem to posses modern views in many other ways, who are educated, still participate in shaming non-virgins. One Turkish psychologist, Dilek Ak?c? Tayanç, stated of male partners of women who had pre-marital sex, “No matter how much he may seem to hold modern views or how unaffected he may seem, in many instances men change their behavior toward their wives due to this (having had pre-marital sex) — they’re more distant, less trusting and display passive-aggressive behaviors.”

However, truly the most disturbing part about this practice to me was the type of response from women who are self-electing to have this surgery. As one patient, Ceyda, 24 years old, stated:

“I’m marrying into a modern family…I’m sure that [my fiancé] would stay with me if he knew I wasn’t a virgin…But my mother says…men will value you more if they think they are the only ones who have had you. A  fresh product is better than a spoiled one. So why not?…My husband should value me, and I don’t mind doing something this easy to make him happy; it takes only half an hour.”

So, even in instances where a woman’s life or well being isn’t in danger, when she is certain that her marriage or relationship isn’t even in danger, she thinks of herself as a “spoiled product” for having had sex, and elects to have surgery to make her “fresh.”

I’m not advocating promiscuity, but can I just say, having sex before you’re married doesn’t ruin you. It doesn’t make you a bad person. As long as you’re safe, as long as you’re smart, as long as you’re doing what’s right for you – sex isn’t an evil overpowering force that will destroy you. But that is my westernized mind speaking. I admit – it’s hard for me to get into any other mindset. The United States is not a patriarchy in the same way that countries like Turkey are, and though I definitely believe that there are cultural messages ingrained into the minds of young American girls, I doubt they are anything like those ingrained in the minds of Turkish girls.

So if my limited, Western perspective is not enough to convince you that hymenoplasty is just not a good idea, maybe the scientific side will get you. Tayanç states that:

“With the surgery an individual cements alienation from their body, and this can lead to increased denial and repression mechanisms; the result can be a decrease of introspection on the part of the individual, value-related issues, desensitization and even dissociation…[the patient] by yielding to the wishes of her spouse and society and viewing her own bodily integrity through someone else’s eyes to satisfy another person, at a result of which she is willing to go under the knife, becomes a psychologically self-destructing individual.”

Of course, it’s undeniable that in extreme situations, this procedure can actually save a woman from being physically, emotionally or socially abused, and even save her life. In that way – this surgery can not only be beneficial, but a blessing.

Bottom line: I really don’t think this procedure, hymenoplasty, as absurd and upsetting as it is to me personally, is the problem.  It’s the cultural beliefs that perpetuate women to want this procedure, that convinces them it’s a good idea – or more seriously the cultural practices that make it necessary, that are the problem.

Until we stop viewing women as useful only for their bodies, and therefore their virginity or purity, procedures like hymenoplasty will continue to exist. Sad, but true.