#94 - Eyesore

Today’s words: Remodel, Unadvised, Education, Delicate

Word count: 295

Completion time: 18 minutes

Summary: It’s possible to change yourself to fit society’s definition of beauty...but they’ll only find something else to make you feel ugly again

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She leans against the peeling wallpaper that’s covered in roses as she picks and scratches her delicate skin. She wants it all gone, wants to remodel herself from the beginning, make it so that she comes out perfect.

When a drawing comes out wrong, the artist crumples it up, throws it away...if the drawing’s conscious, why can’t it redo itself? If it knew that it was an eyesore...would it be unadvised to tell it to change? Sketches can be erased and redrawn, edited and re-edited as many times as they want and it’s okay, so why not for humans? That’s what she thought.

“I want to be beautiful, skinny, lighter, I want to...”

...Please all of the people who only aim to make you feel worse about yourself.

If you change everything about yourself, they’re only going to throw more insecurity at you. Once you’ve cleaned your pretty white dress, bleached it white and ironed out all the creases, they’re only going to find more barbeque sauce and ketchup to dirty it again.

If you give up on looks and try to get a sound education, they’ll mock you relentlessly because you don’t know as much as them, and you’ll never be as smart because you’re a woman. Not only a woman, but a black woman.

Descended from savages, illiterate fools, closer to animal than human. Monkeys can’t read.

Though, once you realise that you can never please them...you don’t have to care so much.

Instead of pleasing them, please yourself. Be someone that you would be proud to know, someone who other people can look up to.

Get up from the floor and fight conformity, don’t submit to it.

You have the power to beat this, they just don’t want you to realise that

#67 - Perfection

Today’s words: Cherisher, Stank, Reduce, Study

Word count: 504

Completion time: 34 minutes

Summary: If someone likes you, they should like all of you

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A cherisher who will love you even when you feel stank and dirty.

Someone who, to reduce your pain, will say something stupid to make you laugh, or focus the negative energy on themselves instead.

A selfless individual who, even when they’re freezing cold, will let you have however many layers you want from them because when you’re happy, they are too.

This person will save your smile as the wallpaper in their mind and every time they see it, they light up inside. All of the things that you hate about yourself, they’d hate if they weren’t there because it’s every part of you that makes you who you are.

When you’re insecure, thinking that they’ll be put off by stretch marks, hair, chubby bits, they barely even notice because they’re too lost in appreciating you. You’ll study these things in the mirror, wondering how to get rid of or hide the things you hate to make yourself feel better, and they’ll say that it doesn’t matter, not one bit.

~

Don’t get me wrong, what someone else thinks about you won’t make the cringing and frustration go away, but it makes you realise that not everyone notices or cares about it as much as you do. That not everyone views you as this less-than-perfect monster that they’d pass up any day for someone who exudes conventional beauty. That fuck what anyone else says, to them, you are perfection. This may sound incredibly unrealistic and a bit too good but love, admiration, infatuation, whatever you want to call it...that shit completely overrides a lot of things.

I’m not naive enough to think that some people do care about certain things; they’ll want your thighs to stop touching, for you to grow your hair out, wear better clothes, stop liking certain things but those people are assholes. Why settle for someone who will pick and pick and pick at you to be better, look better, when there is someone out there who won’t give a shit, no matter how unrealistic you think that is?

If someone is really into you, believe me when I say that they won’t give a fuck.

I’ll be honest – if I really liked someone and found out that they had hair all over their body, or that they had stretch marks and scars galore, or that they like to pick the skin from their toes and eat it...as long as they’re a nice person who fits comfortably with my moral outlook on life, then fuck it – I’m down.

Don’t read articles like, ‘How To Get The Perfect Partner,’ or, ‘What Men/Women Like,’ or ‘Why You’re Single’ because they’re incredibly subjective and fucking awful. You can’t sum up an entire gender or population with an article – some people hate make-up, some shy away from conventional beauty, a lot (a LOT) would date people above a certain skinny size.

Keep doing what you do, and someone else will want to get in on that, and if they don’t...they’re not the right one.

#60 - Body Policing

Today’s words: Arrestee, Political, Lovely, Paint

Word count: 252

Completion time: 26 minutes

Summary: Your body, your rules

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You know, you can strip the paint from your face like the little dress you chose to take off in front of someone who you’re pretty sure was called Alex, or maybe Ryley, but it doesn’t matter actually because your body is just as lovely as when you were a virgin.

What I’m saying is that you can do what you want when you want because it’s your body. It’s nothing political, it’s logical – you are the master of yourself, you decide what goes on, what comes, what goes, so throw away the idea that you’re scum for having fun.

Some people treat promiscuity like the police treat an arrestee, “I’m sorry ma’am, but you’re going to have to come with us. We don’t want any fuss, just close your legs and come quietly.” Shove your body policing and stand aside, small fry.

I’ll only say this once, so clean the wax out and listen good:

Your make-up doesn’t define you

Your clothes don’t define you

Your sexual activity doesn’t define you

What defines you is your attitude

Your personality

Your morality

Someone tries to tell you that’s wrong? Their opinion should never matter because only you get a say on what is and isn’t okay when it comes to your body and your behaviour.

Who tells you what games you should like?

Who tells you what movies you should like?

Who tells you which hobbies to like?

You do.

So why should someone else tell you how to act or dress?

#59 - Little Girl

Today’s words: Look, Rule, Meat, Error

Word count: 113

Completion time: 10 minutes

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You haven’t got enough meat on your bones

You’ve so much more to grow

Don’t say I didn’t tell you so

I look at you and you’re near-complete

From the top of your head to your long bony feet

The potential you have, can you not see?

You could be great, could rule the world

If only you didn’t look so much like a little girl

There’s an error in the system

A flaw in the way

Forgive me if I say

Looking like that...you can’t really be okay

There’s no rule to follow

This isn’t the law

But if you saw what I see when I see you

You’d be concerned, too

#58 - Create-A-Girl

Today’s words: Symbolise, Broaden, Disjuncture, Bread

Word count: 242

Completion time: 26 minutes

Summary: Perfect people don’t exist and they never will

Change her hair colour

Now her hairstyle

Make her eyes a little better

And you always liked green eyes, right?

Thin her nose down

Make her lips fuller, but not bee-stung

Slightly podgy cheeks are cuter

So are freckles

Broaden her jaw

Give her cute little ears

A slightly higher brow

Well-groomed eyebrows

Okay, body type...

Thinner

Bigger boobs

Bigger ass

Small, dainty feet

Not too tall, either

No option to add body hair?

Good; you like them hairless

Now for the clothes

Oh, nothing too slutty

Get rid of that default short dress

She’s a classy lady

A plain spaghetti-strap top will do

And some skinny jeans

That will symbolise someone not afraid to show some skin

But leaves enough to the imagination

Shoes? Hm

Heels. Heels are hot.

Personality?

Spontaneous but not crazy

Someone who can join in on the lads’ jokes

But still retain her femininity

Knows how to clean, but isn’t OCD about it

A good cook

Like

More than putting bread in a toaster and calling it a meal

Intelligence! But not smarter than you...

Confident but not vain

Laid-back but not lazy

Honest but not brutally so

Congratulations

You’re created your perfect woman on a virtual simulator

Your next task is to find someone similar in the real world

There’s a disjuncture between the real and the virtual

There’s also a disjuncture between people who’ve been manipulated to look better

And people who haven’t

Wake up

#49 - Now You See It

Today’s words: Sign, Knock Kneed, Ray, Burier

Word count: 350

Completion time: 1 hour

Summary: Some prejudice you just can’t avoid no matter what

As soon as some people are born, a grave is dug.

Naturally, the baby is oblivious to this, and sometimes the parents won’t know either, but still the burier keeps on digging; they dig in the snow, the rain, even in the height of summer when a small ray of sun is enough to peel skin away from uncovered limbs. It’s an arduous task but they don’t stop until it looks the grave’s big enough to erase a body altogether.

Knock kneed and panting like a dog in heat, the task is done. Wait. But, how long? As long as it takes. It could only be a year or two, but hopefully it’s more.

As the child grows up, they might start to feel a little empty inside, depending on who they associate with or how strong they are. They’ll put a hand to their chest just to check, but everything appears to be in working order. Shrugging it off, they continue with their lives until the pressure weighs down.

It starts with dirty looks.

Nasty words.

Maybe a few shoves.

And it escalates

Impossible to escape

Are you gay or are you straight?

Never mind that, what about your race?

You look a disgrace, don’t look me in the face

An eyesore to the core. Go on, get away from this place!

Then they see it. They see their own grave. Sprint as they might, they can’t run; their fate’s been decided from day one. What can they do to change it? Nothing. This is not something that can be changed like a bloody plaster.

So they try to fight, they run, but because they’re too focused on getting away, they fall into that oppressive hole with such swiftness that you’d consider supernatural interference if you had seen them go.

The sign planted in the dirt differs with each person: gay, lesbian, transgender, bisexual, asexual, queer, pansexual, disabled, too fat, too thin, person of colour...there’s a whole set that the burier likes to keep, and it’s growing a little more every day.

Now you see it,

Now you don’t.