Pretty by Katie Makkai
“When I was just a little girl, I asked my mother, “What will I be? Will I be pretty? Will I be pretty? WILL I BE PRETTY?! What comes next? Oh right, will I be rich?” Which is almost pretty depending on where you shop. And the pretty question infects from conception, passing blood and breath into cells. The word hangs from our mothers’ hearts in a shrill fluorescent floodlight of worry.
“Will I be wanted? Worthy? Pretty?” But puberty left me this funhouse mirror dryad: teeth set at science fiction angles, crooked nose, face donkey-long and pockmarked where the hormones went finger-painting. My poor mother.
“How could this happen? You’ll have porcelain skin as soon as we can see a dermatologist. You sucked your thumb. That’s why your teeth look like that! You were hit in the face with a Frisbee when you were 6. Otherwise your nose would have been just fine!
“Don’t worry. We’ll get it all fixed!” She would say, grasping my face, twisting it this way and that, as if it were a cabbage she might buy.
But this is not about her. Not her fault. She, too, was raised to believe the greatest asset she could bestow upon her awkward little girl was a marketable facade. By 16, I was pickled with ointments, medications, peroxides. Teeth corralled into steel prongs. Laying in a hospital bed, face packed with gauze, cushioning the brand new nose the surgeon had carved.
Belly gorged on 2 pints of my own blood I had swallowed under anesthesia, and every convulsive twist of my gut like my body screaming at me from the inside out, “What did you let them do to you!”
All the while this never-ending chorus droning on and on, like the IV needle dripping liquid beauty into my blood. “Will I be pretty? Will I be pretty? Like my mother, unwrapping the gift wrap to reveal the bouquet of daughter her $10,000 bought her? Pretty? Pretty.”
And now, I have not seen my own face for 10 years. I have not seen my own face in 10 years, but this is not about me.
This is about the self-mutilating circus we have painted ourselves clowns in. About women who will prowl 30 stores in 6 malls to find the right cocktail dress, but haven’t a clue where to find fulfillment or how to wear joy, wandering through life shackled to a shopping bag, beneath the tyranny of those two pretty syllables.
About men wallowing on bar stools, drearily practicing attraction and everyone who will drift home tonight, crest-fallen because not enough strangers found you suitably fuckable.
This, this is about my own some-day daughter. When you approach me, already stung, stained with insecurity, begging, “Mom, will I be pretty? Will I be pretty?” I will wipe that question from your mouth like cheap lipstick and answer, “No! The word pretty is unworthy of everything you will be, and no child of mine will be contained in five letters.
“You will be pretty intelligent, pretty creative, pretty amazing. But you, will never be merely ‘pretty’.”
“Love your body the way your mother loved your baby feet.”
I wish I could show this to every girl, ever.
reblogging this again because it is the best advice I have ever heard
aw, good!
I almost started crying in Starbucks.
This is beautiful. Jesus, I’m sobbing.
i know girls who are trying to fit into the social norm
like squeezing into last year’s prom dress
i know girls who are low rise, mac eyeshadow, and binge drinking
i know girls that wonder if they’re disaster and sexy enough to fit in
i know girls who are fleeing bombs from the mosques of their skin
playing russian roulette with death; it’s never easy to accept
that our bodies are fallible and flawed
but when do we draw the line?
when the knife hits the skin?
isn’t it the same thing as purging,
because we’re so obsessed with death,
some women just have more guts than others
the funny thing is women like us don’t shoot
we swallow pills, still wanting to be beautiful at the morgue,
still proceeding to put on make-up,
still hoping that the mortician finds us fuckable and attractive
we might as well be buried with our shoes,
and handbags and scarves, girls
we flirt with death everytime we etch a new tally mark
into our skin
i know how to split my wrists like a battlefield too
but the time has come for us to
reclaim our bodies
our bodies deserve more than to be war-torn and collateral,
offering this fuckdom as a pathetic means to say,
“i only know how to exist when i’m wanted”
girls like us are hardly ever wanted you know
we’re used up and sad and drunk and
perpetually waiting by the phone for someone to pick up
and tell us that we did good
You did good.
( i know i am because i said am, my body is home)
so try this
take your hands over your bumpy lovebody naked
and remember the first time you touched someone
with the sole purpose of learning all of them
touched them because the light was pretty on them
and the dust in the sunlight danced the way your heart did
touch yourself with a purpose
your body is the most beautiful royal
fathers and uncles are not claiming your knife anymore
are not your razor, no
put the sharpness back
lay your hands flat and feel the surface of scarred skin
i once touched a tree with charred limbs
the stump was still breathing
but the tops were just ashy remains,
i wonder what it’s like to come back from that
sometimes i feel a forest fire erupting from my wrists
and the smoke signals sent out are the most beautiful things
i’ve ever seen
love your body the way your mother loved your baby feet
and brother, arm wrapping shoulders, and remember,
this is important:
you are worth more than who you fuck
you are worth more than a waistline
you are worth more than any naked body could proclaim
in the shadows, more than a man’s whim
or your father’s mistake
you are no less valuable as a size 16, than a size 4
you are no less valuable as a 32A than a 36C,
your sexiness is defined by concentric circles within your wood;
wisdom
you are a goddamn tree stump with leaves sprouting out:
reborn
"The subtext of 'couldn’t she have done more?' is always 'oh, she obviously didn’t want to avoid that rape/harassment quite enough.' Whatever the questioner would deem 'sufficient' can always just lie one step beyond what was actually done. Thus it becomes, gradually or all at once, none of the perpetrator’s responsibility and entirely the victim’s. This is a mode of thinking intended to erase one human actor from the equation, leaving only one possible conclusion: Somehow the victim did this to herself."
The perpetrator becomes, by magic, the Man Who Wasn’t There, and we pretend that sexual harassment/violence is some natural phenomenon, like pollen or bad weather, that women just happen to walk into. We pretend that it doesn’t stem from human actions or choices, except the actions or choices of the victim.
Imagine that a man heaves a bucket of cold water all over a woman. Soaked, shocked, the woman appeals to passers-by for help, pointing to the man, who stands there laughing and enjoying her consternation. “Who the hell does he think he is?” asks the woman, but the passers-by completely ignore the man with the bucket. Instead they ask the woman why she wasn’t carrying an umbrella, since she ought to have known it might rain.
How to make Piñata cookies!
MY LIFE JUST CHANGED YOU GUYS
I-Pad docking station called ‘Venus of Cupertino” created by London-based designer,Scott Eaton.
I really love this for some reason.
“I want to nominate a man who’s cool on the outside but who burns for America on the inside. I want – I want a man who believes with no doubt that we can build a new American dream economy, driven by innovation and creativity, by education and, yes, by cooperation. And by the way, after last night, I want a man who had the good sense to marry Michelle Obama.” — Former President Bill Clinton’s Remarks at the 2012 Democratic National Convention
“There seems to be some quality in human nature where if everybody had the same religion and everybody lived in the same country, probably the black-haired people would hate blondes, and maybe the redheads would be shunned. I don’t know. It seems that some people have to have somebody else to feel superior to and to dislike.” — Stan Lee
GIVE ME THIS RIGHT NOW
WHY DONT I OWN THIS?!
If they were just leggings, these would be dope as fuck.
i love that she gives Nicki Minaj a run for her money in this! love her lol
SUBMISSION THEME: “DAT ASS”One of things I love about a THICK woman is the view from behind!
Do you have a nice view? We want to see what you’re workin’ with!Submission: http://mythickisbeautiful.com/submit
John Green: GAY is NOT an INSULT (x)
Me:
Rie // 20's // NYer // College grad // Mixed-race // Feminist // Everything-curious // Everything-positive // Uncensored // Uncompromising
This Blog:
18+ // NSFW // Hateful, closed-minded, misogynist, cis-sexist, MRA, intolerant bigots need not apply // No respect/no manners - NO SERVICE
