Strangeness is a necessary ingredient in beauty, I say
Just enough to make it interesting so you're not a plain Jane
Yet you still grasp on to what the media proclaims
Can't quite fit the mold
Baby fat put to shame
Dancing fingers along curves that define your space in the world
Before clasping at porcelain, ready to hurl and suck in a gut that just tips over jeans,
Too skinny to fit any love in the seams
Praying someday to look, begging someday to feel
That it's worth it-- that you're worth it, that your beauty is real
Pinching in muscle and grinding down bones till there's nothing natural left
But a frown pasted on to a face vacuum sealed with a kiss upon lips
Far too plump to conceal that your words tinge with lisps
No matter that you finally feel
Put together, literally put together
Patchwork person that you are held together by pain
Self hatred is the morphine that drips through your veins
Shots straight to your heart, absorbed into your soul
Gasping you try to make up for not being whole
For tossing parts of yourself to the masses who claimed
That skinny feels better and ugly's just lame
You silence the voice in your head that whispered to you,
You're all right, you're okay
And the very next day you're caught up in the fake-ness you have to portray
Work for gaps in thighs that don't jiggle when slapped,
Mascara-ed eyes that pop as you bat them up and down and up and down
Like your emotions as you wind up tight then crash to the ground
An eternity's worth of body issues and standards to uphold,
Packed into your head that seems like it'll explode
With the sounds and the voices that tell you no,
No you're too fat, you're not right, you don't fit, you're too old
That say all that you have are laugh lines
Nothing worthwhile, too tough, you've no luck
They beat you
Beat you down to mold you back up into
Just another pretty model, a beautiful angel, lovely gorgeous smokin' hottttttt
Dayyym girl, your face, I like that shit
But those words are just labels you can tear off
Like you rip off the tags on new clothes
Yank and break threads of plastic tying down letters of what others say you are
Because you should be reaching for words like exotic and unique
Embracing the bizarre, the alluring, the different and strange
Leave them starry eyed with how sleek you are when you make moves
Leave them remembering you for being more than just a cute, made-up face
Striving for a perfection that doesn’t exist
That ideal plastered across billboards or movie screens,
Don’t let what doesn’t exist except by Photoshop schemes
Have you plastered on the floor by peer pressured, alcoholic induced dreams
Filtered through pixels on Instagram screens
Of the most edited parts of your peers’ lives
That almost have you believing in fairytales again
No one looks their best all the time
But you can be your best self
Because beauty moves beyond looks and can be destroyed
By accidents, deliberate action, and the passage of time
Don’t wallow in your bucket of self-pity
Just own who you are and how you look – Bad hair days be damned!
Crank up the wattage in your smiles and blind them with your brilliance
Your beauty is in your actions and your love of yourself
Be sugar.
Be spice.
Be more than everything nice.