Mirror Mirror On the Wall | Teen Ink

Mirror Mirror On the Wall

December 1, 2009
By Anonymous

I hung on her wall.
Telling her she was the fairest of them all
but she only saw she couldn't stand and
When she stood in front of me,
it was a battle against her own worst enemy,
spitting bullets through her self esteem,
bleeding insecurities and projecting them on me,
she saw a collection of disfigured facial features,
but she was beautiful.
Couldn't be more backwards or more similar at the same time,
I tried to imitate the light that burst from her beauty,
but somewhere in this 3 foot space,
the light waves got contorted,
squeezed and resorted,
swelled and twisted,
I told her the truth but she must have missed it,
she couldn't stand to see her eyes open,
instead finding motivation in waking up late,
replacing caffeined coffee with the breakfast she never ate,
and everything I told her just came out so backwards.

She's been eating up society's idea of beauty to satisfy hunger pains,
since before she knew how to read nutrition facts,
when she learned,
nothing tastes as good as thin feels.
I watched her swap math homework with illogic,
Where negative calories meant a positive day,
I wonder where she learned this lesson anyway.
Maybe through companies profiting off womens' insecurities,
Maybe maybaline makes money off mangled morale.

But I guess the odds weren't in her favor.
4 out of 5 women are dissatisfied with their looks,
and eating disorders have 1 in 5 women hooked
I wish I could change her mind.
She started grabbing stomach skin
convinced that eating was a deadly sin,
and that’s when,
these viral insecurities lost their latent tendencies,
consuming her thoughts,
She thought by consuming less that she’d be better off.
see scales measure weight,
and she just wanted to get this stress off her chest,
but she didn’t know how,
so she settled for the next best thing,
see this silence,
is eating her alive,
So she started spilling secrets hidden in stomach acid,
To make things a little less painful,
she's entering a carnival maze
stretching to show her face on different frames,
But this is no fun house,
only smoke and mirrors,
her eyes are playing tricks on her,
and I wish she would see that photoshop isn’t magic,
these models aren’t real.

Feeling like I had failed her.
I must have cracked,
under all this pressure,
I guess my glass,
must have shattered,
giving her seven years of bad luck,
seven years of being stuck,
we're feeding our daughters years of insecurities,
shoving self hatred down our sisters' throats,
no wonder they have trouble learning how to cope,
wishing there was more I could do as I watched her waist waste away,
trying to get her attention as she turned away,
She’s dying to be thin,
women are starving to be stunning,
We need to open our eyes,
Because all I see now, is an issue concealed by glamor magazines,
Where are the real women?
with real scars who still find reasons to smile,
real women who left abuse because they know that they're worthwhile.
I've never seen anything more breathtaking than hard working mothers,
who have more laugh lines recording their life stories than frown lines,
because being beautiful is finding happiness in life,
see women have never been the damsel in distress because,
although they may look sexy in dresses,
they have shown more strength throughout history.
susan b anthony never stopped fighting,
without emily dickinson, s*** i wouldn't be writing,
lewis and clark would have been lost with out Sacagawea
oprah, rosa parks, coretta, marie curie,
where would we be without their strength,
Why are we shopping for unreal sex appeal when
real women are beautiful.


The author's comments:
I was inspired by personal experiences as well as those close to me. This is an extremely important issue for our generation. This is a spoken word peice

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