Fact: Men lack tact.

One absolute fact of life is that men, in general, do not understand the extent to which any comment made about a girl's appearance, personality, or life is usually obsessed over for hours, days and months. Or, in my case, years.

I was probably six years old when it started...

"You have a honking nose... just like me."

"It is going to keep growing and you'll have a huge nose in no time!"

Oh the joys of growing up the daughter of Tom Lichtenfels, who in his deepest of hearts I believe has a nose complex to rival a Greek. Now, he meant all of his teasing in a totally harmless, "I am so hilarious even if I am the only one that thinks so" kind of way. Yet at six years old I was determined that sooner or later my nose would grow larger than my head and I would be forced to live in the woods, in hiding and shame.

And the nose was only the start of it... apparently, and to my poor mother's misfortune, I was also born with a head in the 98th percentile. I didn't really understood what that meant, but was aware that only 2% of the baby population had been born with a head bigger than mine. Add that onto the fact that I weighed seven pounds and 19 inches long...... I was, without question, a giant headed skinny stick baby. And I stayed that way until I went to Spain and finally grew into my huge head and tiny bones. Now I am the proud owner of an ass and no longer get asked if I am 14 and/or going into the eighth grade. However, if I look in the mirror, I don't a slight issue with my body except my obese head and nose.

Okay well that's a lie. I did get over the huge head issue after accepting that I would always have to buy the XXL ski helmets; that issue was easily avoided by refusing to wear one. And as for the huge nose issue, I realized that despite his best efforts to tease me into horror, my nose is actually very normal sized. And anyway, since when do noses get sized up? Unless you have one that is just utterly unavoidable, and in that case I am very sorry for you. But luckily, that is not me.

I think when it comes down to it, the whole tact behind "Honey, of course you don't look fat in that." is the extent of the male population's ability to spoof, bluff or sneak their way through those awkward and sticky conversations. But perhaps it is more that, similarly to my father, they just get immense joy out of giving us women shit without realizing that we will probably literally stare in a mirror for an hour wondering if our chin looks like a baby butt or our left eye brow is a quarter of a centimeter higher than our right one. Perhaps it is time we switched the roles and started informing them that it appeared as if they had gotten a hair cut, or maybe that is just a receding hair line??