I wasn’t that cute when I was a kid. I had ultra pale skin and painfully bad hair – frizzy and untamed. To make matters worse, I was just kind of odd. I had strange interests for a youngster – an affinity for dressing up as a pioneer girl who lived in the old west. There was a period of time starting at about 7 or 8 where I regularly donned a bonnet and a Laura Ingall's dress and roamed the woods eating tree bark and looking for berries. Cosplay before its heyday, I suppose. We can’t all be child YouTube stars, eh? Quiet, smart and conscientious, I thrived in the corners of my imagination. I was safe in that world, and then…POOF. It happened.
The blossoming. The development of curves and the embodiment of femininity. The facial features that became more defined and much prettier. The mirror calling. The breasts that bounced. The excitement of it all. Little do you know that everything gets worse when you’re deemed ‘beautiful’. You wish someone had warned you. You wish you had known that it’s a trap. You think you’re seen, but somehow you become more invisible, especially to yourself.
It all happens so quickly. They start noticing you. Like the summer you turned eleven and it’s scorching outside so you walk to the corner store to get a slurpee in your bathing suit top. Afterwards, you’ll probably pop into the antique store and maybe buy an old Archie comic. But then, from across the street, a middle-aged man sexualizes you with a lewd comment. This isn’t the world of slurpees and Archie comics anymore. This world is new, and it feels unsafe and exposed. You tell yourself you need to think about what you wear a little more. Like when the senior boy unexpectedly grabs your breast as you walk to class in13-year-old skin. You just freeze and pull up your spaghetti strap. If you told your brothers, it would be bad, so you say don’t say anything to anyone at all.
One by one, they come. It’s innocent at first. Whispers and passed notes and sideways glances from the boys in your classes. But the attention makes you anxious. You start to lose friends when their crushes have crushes on you. You don’t understand why, you’re awkward and you don’t even know how to talk to them. You don’t even want it. But it keeps happening all the same.
Somewhere along the way, you decide to own it. You become enmeshed in this new world and discover the power it brings. The boys who’d get a little too excited as they held you close at the school dance. The utter embarrassment they’d face. The hallway water fights with the king of the school between classes. The flirtations with the older boys who gave you cutesy nicknames. The whispers and the inside jokes and the provocative talk. The boyfriend two years your senior. The untouched body. The frustrated attempts. The moonlit dock and the earnest suitor trying to make his move only to get tossed in the lake by those seeking to impede him. The Malibu Barbie prom queen owning her sexuality. The gawking and fawning at your debut. You’re doing this. You. Your body. The little way you tilt your head and that thing you do with your eyes. The way you’d say something witty or sarcastic and they’d eat it up.
You started to like it; the way you’d make them squirm. The small-town boys and how shiny they thought you were. The way they’d fight over you and fall all over themselves just to get in the room with you. The way you’d narrow in on someone and they’d so easily be yours. The fights between brothers and best friends and the little fires you’d light just to watch them burn. The unpaid cover and the flowing drinks. The overly attentive bartenders. The infatuated band boys you’d kill time with in the backseat listening to In Rainbows on repeat. You have no plans to see this through, but if you frustrate him enough maybe he’ll write a song about you. The endless options and the passive responses. The ludicrous tips slipped in your shirt from the infatuated patrons and the numbers written on the back of the tab because you’re his ‘favourite’ waitress.
It feels good, doesn’t it? To be wanted. To be desired. It meets a need. But what about the unsolicited hands on your thighs? The collection of unwanted tongues that would slip into your mouth as you’d bite your own. The swallowed blood and the metallic glide. The pie-eyed dance floor meet cutes and the concupiscent admirers tearing at your clothes. The street-lit lovesick spiels you’d listen to just to be polite. The things nice girls do. Your pinned body on the hotel bed and the drunk guy looming on top claiming through sputtered tears that you’re everything he wants. He’s not making sense. He barely knows you, so you know that can’t possibly be true. He starts talking dirty. He starts pressing down harder. You’re panicking a bit now and you never really realized how small you are in comparison. How it’s just so easy…because he’s physically dominant, all boys are. The boys who said they liked you because you were tiny. You get it now. But you never really worried before. And now you just want out of here because this date is not going as planned. Your phone is dying. You should’ve charged it, dummy. And you shouldn’t have gotten so blitzed, you know? You shouldn’t have come back here. What the fuck were you thinking? But you’re alert enough now to know things are taking a turn. You assuage him somehow and say you really need to pee. He slips out for a cigar, and with your last 3 percent of battery life you call your best friend. She says she’ll be there soon. When he returns, you play it cool and cute and try to slow things down. You make future plans. She texts you when she arrives. You dart towards the door and book it down the hall, and he runs after you. The guy at the front desk looks at you wide-eyed. You see the truck and rush to get in, slamming the door as your relentless suitor tries to jump inside. He calls you for days after, trying to apologize, but you don’t pick up. You blame yourself for the signals you were firing off.
You're to blame for their desires. It doesn't matter if you reciprocate or not. You’ll never stop wondering about the things you could have done differently, and this question will bleed into your life far beyond the scope of this moment. You’ll see everything men do in response to you as an indicator of your failings. You’ll never stop apologizing for being too much. You’ll ruin so many things. The common denominator here – the only thing that pulls them into your orbit or pushes them away – is you. You’re broken. You’re just another face. There’s no magic here. Your beauty is hollow and it will fade darling, it will fade. When it does, you'll be nothing because nobody sees anything else.
You just know that if this is what being ‘seen’ is - if this is what ‘beauty’ brings - you don’t want it. You never wanted it. You just wanted to be adored for every fractured piece.