Barbie

I grew up chucking Barbies out of my bedroom window. Their pretty blonde heads and endless tanned legs endured this harsh treatment with complacent smiles, and seemed to grow stronger because of it. So strong that every time I climbed back upstairs after collecting the barbies from their unfortunate plummets, I would look at them a little closer. I grew jealous of their smooth, blemish free skin, their impossibly thin bodies, and their perfect button noses. I fried my skin laying in the sun with lemon juice in my hair, desperate to make it even just one shade lighter. I spent hours concealing the freckles that persisted on my skin throughout even the darkest nights of winter. I used my graphing calculator to count calories and chose to run instead of eat every time my stomach screamed for a reprieve. "I'll just do this once", you tell yourself "and then I'll be happy". But, perfection is an addiction and there always seems to be something you're missing. And so, you carve into your skin and change the very structure of your bones so that even in death you will be forever marked by your childhood obsession. You spend hundreds of thousands of dollars until your bank account is empty and your implants ache and the swelling on your new nose refuses to go down. The next time you go outside, after weeks of bandaging your face and popping pain killers, people stare. A lttle girl holding her barbie looks at you, then at her doll, then back up to you again. She thinks "well if she can look like her, then why don't I? How can I?" And so it happens again, and again, and again.

Authors Note:

To anyone reading this: with or without plastic surgery you are beautiful, with or without makeup you are beautiful. Beauty is a societal concept that varies for each individual person so do not hold yourself to impossible standards because it's what you believe you need to do. Every single person, regardless of gender, has something unique and special about them. Be kind to yourself and learn to love yourself for everything that you are rather than fixating on what you are not.