are you pretty enough?

Picture a butterfly tearing herself out of her cocoon. She grew up too fast, for her own good.

When I was 13, I had my first period and my first boyfriend. I was at the start of the transition from girlhood to womanhood. He liked my body. I grew up too fast. He wished for me to grow up faster so that I could get bigger tits. So I ate myself into bigger tits. I forced myself to eat extra rice every meal. I ate until I felt my stomach burst.

Then, we broke up. Then, I had no place to put this imperfect, personally tailored body anymore. For what was I to do with it?

When I was 15, I made new friends. Two boys who helped me through everything, who made me laugh until my stomach burst. Then I got access to their social media accounts. They talked about the girls they knew. They talked about me. They sent each other pictures of me, trying to see through my clothes and imagine what I looked like naked. They thought I looked hot. I took it as a compliment. They said that they wouldn’t know how to control themselves if they were in a room with me alone.

I was with them until 2am the week before, laughing as I normally do. I had no clue that they thought about me like this. I took screenshots. I talked about how fucked up it was.

Then I started wearing tight clothing. Body hugging clothes. Clothes that I couldn’t breathe in, but hey, I looked hot right? At least I was seen.

When I was 17, I went to a party. A guy lifted me up for fun. Then I found out that he talked about me with his best friend. Talking about how thick my thighs were. About how he would love to have me on his Perfect Road Trip. Along with his other girl-friends.

I discussed this intensively with my best friend. I didn’t tell my then-boyfriend about it. I swallowed it deep inside me. Until his thoughts became mine.

Am I only wanted when I’m pretty? How can I ever feel pretty when I feel like a piece of meat? Lusted upon like I’m being hunted, a deer being chased by a pride of lions?

And how can I ever escape being the prey when I’ve gotten a taste of it? I could deny it a billion times, but then I’d be a liar. Mark my face with big bold letters, L-I-A-R.

I have internalised it. I am a woman with a man inside watching a woman. I am my own voyeur.

“Male fantasies, male fantasies, is everything run by male fantasies? Up on a pedestal or down on your knees, it's all a male fantasy: that you're strong enough to take what they dish out, or else too weak to do anything about it. Even pretending you aren't catering to male fantasies is a male fantasy: pretending you're unseen, pretending you have a life of your own, that you can wash your feet and comb your hair unconscious of the ever-present watcher peering through the keyhole, peering through the keyhole in your own head, if nowhere else. You are a woman with a man inside watching a woman. You are your own voyeur.” - Margaret Atwood

My personal style is created by what I like wearing, because I feel good in them. Or maybe I wear short clothes to show off my thick thighs, and I wear tight clothes to prove that I have tits.

I wear makeup to enhance my natural beauty. But not so much as to make them hate me. And I don’t speak of it at all, ever. I make it seem effortless.

Bodies are trends, slim-thick is out, and heroin chic skinny is in. So, I obsess. I try to lose weight because maybe then I’d be SURE that I’m beautiful. I starve myself, I tell myself that I like it that way. Then I end up eating like a pig because I can’t take it anymore. This is my cycle, my personal hell.

Now let’s add the competition aspect to this. Not only do you have to look as stunning as you possibly can, you also have to compete with every other woman regarding this. Not because you want to, but because there’s no escaping it.

A guy I liked wrote a poem about my best friend. I didn’t get a single poem from him. He had me, but he was completely smitten by her. I felt like roadside trash.

Don’t get me wrong, my best friend is beautiful. But I never saw her as competition, I saw her as my companion, a woman of my own kind, separate from me. But this fucking shattered me. Not only did I not get love from the man I liked, my friendship was suddenly threatened???

And I made other women feel this way, too. I was at a clothing store with my friends, looking at the mirror like I usually do. I complimented myself by saying I looked pretty for the first time, and my friend lashed out on me. She screamed at me for saying that because I always looked pretty and that she felt ugly around me. Our friendship was never the same.

Why, as women, is our self worth so tied to what we look like? Why can our friendships be threatened like this? It feels like a curse, it feels like we live in a different world. I feel like I live in a glass house, always ready to be gawked at like a zoo animal.

I want to be ugly. I want to be gross. I want to be disgusting. Maybe then, I’d be free to do whatever I wanted. Or maybe I’d be ostracised by society and live a lone, depressing life.

Whatever the case is, beauty fades away. It doesn’t last. A god dangles it in front of you like it’s a taste of the holy nectar. You are fated to chase it. And then it is taken away from you the moment you feel beautiful.

I am fucking tired. That’s it, that’s the end of the blog post. I don’t know how to deal with it.

For closure, I did tell my best friend about the poem that the guy wrote. I told her how I felt about it. And yes it still stings. But I am over it, as humanly possible it is for me to be over it. And I have a loving boyfriend who tells me that I am beautiful everyday. Yes, I do believe it. I don’t have self esteem issues. It’s just hard being a fucking girl LOL.

Also is every guy fucked in the head? Does every guy rate women on a scale of 1-10 and play smash or pass regarding them? Please lmk L O L

Anyways thank you so much for reading if you’ve read up until this point. I am really thankful. I’ve spent at least an hour on this now haha.

27/7/23