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Tina Fey as Liz Lemon in 30 Rock (Photo: NBC / Getty)

American comedian Tina Fey first made a name for herself as a writer and performer on Saturday Night Live, a stint that began in the mid-1990s. Since then she has created 30 Rock and Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, morphed convincingly into Sarah Palin, co-hosted the Golden Globes three times to huge acclaim, appeared in numerous movies, won most of the awards available to her, and written a bestselling memoir titled Bossypants1. It’s from that book that the following list—of body parts for which Fey is grateful—comes.

If you don’t have a good body, you’d better starve the body you have down to a neutral shape, then bolt on some breast implants, replace your teeth, dye your skin orange, inject your lips, sew on some hair, and call yourself the Playmate of the Year.
How do we survive this? How do we teach our daughters and our gay sons that they are good enough the way they are? We have to lead by example. Instead of trying to fit an impossible ideal, I took a personal inventory of all my healthy body parts for which I am grateful:
Straight Greek eyebrows. They start at the hairline at my temple and, left unchecked, will grow straight across my face and onto yours.
A heart-shaped ass. Unfortunately, it’s a right-side-up heart; the point is at the bottom.
Droopy brown eyes designed to confuse predators into thinking I’m just on the verge of sleep and they should come back tomorrow to eat me.
Permanently rounded shoulders from years of working at a computer.
A rounded belly that is pushed out by my rounded posture no matter how many sit-ups I do. Which is mostly none.
A small high waist.
A wad of lower-back fat that never went away after I lost my “baby weight.” One day in the next ten years, this back roll will meet up with my front pouch, forever obscuring my small high waist, and I will officially be my mother.
Wide-set knockers that aren’t so big but can be hoisted up once or twice a year for parades.
Good strong legs with big gym teacher calves that I got from walking pigeon-toed my whole life.
Wide German hips that look like somebody wrapped Pillsbury dough around a case of soda.
My father’s feet. Flat. Bony. Pale. I don’t know how he even gets around, because his feet are in my shoes.
I would not trade any of these features for anybody else’s. I wouldn’t trade the small thin-lipped mouth that makes me resemble my nephew. I wouldn’t even trade the acne scar on my right cheek, because that recurring zit spent more time with me in college than any boy ever did.

This list can be found in the Lists of Note book. Originally excerpted from Tina Fey’s memoir, Bossypants. Copyright © 2011 by Tina Fey. Reprinted by permission of Little, Brown and Company.

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1

This list of her accomplishments is not exhaustive. She has in fact been much busier.

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