Tori Spelling’s Advice For Her 21-Year-Old Self Includes Eyebrow Tweezing — Mine Is Different

Yesterday on Torispelling.com, Tori Spelling, who is expecting her fourth child with Dean McDermott this fall, posted advice she would give to her 21-year-old self. The advice I would give myself at age 21 is quite different, and it would probably be accompanied by slapping myself upside the head with a brick a few times in order to make sure I got my point across. I was a train wreck at age 21. The Craft Wars host posted this:

I would tell 21-year-old Tori that she’s strong, beautiful, smart, and can do anything that she sets her mind to. At 21, my biggest obstacle (well aside from a bad boyfriend) was myself. I lacked such self-confidence that I constantly stood in my own way. Although I don’t believe in regrets and think every moment makes us the women and moms we ultimately become, it would be nice to give this advice!

Oh, and I would have taught myself how to tweeze my eyebrows- haha!

I think we all wish we knew back at that age what we know now. I look back at myself at that age and cringe. It wasn’t just a withering lack of self-confidence and a heaping pile of bad judgment that I possessed at 21, it was also being convinced that I knew everything. With that being said, I have my own advice for me at that age.

Apologize to your mother. And then apologize again. Your mother was right about basically everything, except that one time when she told you to get your hair cut and your stylist cut off too much and you ended up looking like a rejected member from A Flock of Seagulls. 

You see that guy over there? The one with the shoulder-length hair and leather jacket who is talking far too loudly about the merits of The Replacements versus Firehose? Do. not. date.him. He is cute and funny and charming and he will, on most evenings, drink an entire six-pack of PBR followed by a few shots of Jack Daniels and then proceed to tell you ad infinitum how you would be really, really cute if you just lost ten pounds and how lucky you are that he is dating you. He will also be dating a few other girls at the same time. And then, on a night you have made other plans, you decide to go to the  bar  you usually frequent and you find him with his tongue down another girl’s throat who has spent far too much time in a tanning bed and takes her style cues from Tawny Kitaen, you will realize what a creep he is. Do not date him. The same goes for the next four guys after him. The only things you will learn from these experiences are that alcoholics aren’t the best boyfriends, men who always make you pay on dates because they “forgot their wallet” or are “trying to figure out what to do with their lives” so they don’t have a job aren’t that fun to go on dates with, and that you really have no interest in ditching class in order to go on a road trip with a guy who considers dry humping you in the backseat of his car romantic. Had you listened to your mother, you could have avoided all this.

Stop hating yourself. Your body is amazing. Your skin is perfect. Now that your hair has grown out you look really beautiful. You will only realize this 20 years from now when you see photographs of yourself and think “Why did I find so many things wrong with me?” Stop eating a piece of cake and then rushing to the bathroom, your knees sore from kneeling on peeling linoleum and your knuckles raw from forcing yourself to expel your guilty slice of devil’s food in the toilet. Stop starving yourself and existing on Diet Coke and saltine crackers. Stop wasting money on department store foundation makeup you don’t really need, consuming endless hours with a stack of glossy women’s magazines attempting to figure out how you can look better, prettier. Pluck your eyebrows if you really want, or else go on a long walk and laugh with your best friend. 

Spend time with your sisters. One day you will move far away and even though you will have emails and hour-long phone calls, spend time with your sisters. Even though you may not agree with everything they say, one day you will miss them more than anything. The same goes for your parents, and your grandparents. At age 21 it’s hard to imagine ever being without the people you love, the reality of people dying. In the future you will lie awake at night, missing your sister’s laugh, how she can make you spew water out your nose, your guts sore from laughing, mascara running down your face. You will miss your grandmother with a dull ache in your bones and your heart, wishing for one more afternoon listening to the stories and advice you found so boring and old fashioned at age21.

Volunteer. Find a cause you can believe in and do everything in your power to try and make the world a better place. Mentor young girls. Walk stray dogs from your local shelter. Visit cancer patients. Find something you are passionate about outside school, hobbies and work and get involved.

Take all advice, vampire women around you, listen to everything they say. You may not need to follow all of this advice, but listen with an open mind. Women, especially older women, know everything. They can teach you how to save money, take care of your body, clean your house, expand your mind, further your career. Men can give really good advice as well, especially men who have your best interests at heart, like your father or brothers. But women are magic. Greedily take their wisdom and scrawl it in lined paper notebooks and copies of books they have suggested.

Vote. Just that.

Appreciate where you are at age 21. Enjoy all of these drama and angst and indecisiveness and confusion that goes with being a young woman, but realize you are stronger, smarter and more capable than you could ever imagine. Push yourself, but do it for you. Travel anywhere you can, meet as many people as you can, surround yourself with friends who make you feel amazing. Challenge yourself.

There are only two cliches I fully believe. One is that change is the only constant in the universe, that everything is always changing, including ourselves. Life can change in an instant. The other is that times goes by too fast. One day I’m going to find myself giving this advice, plus a lot more to my own daughter when she is 21. I can only hope she listens a lot better than I did at that age.

(Photo: Hall/Pena, PacificCoastNews.com)

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