"The TV tells me to transform my body and it feels a little like a command and a lot like a death sentence. Transform, be transformed, be better, be anything but what you are now. Whatever it is, we promise it is not enough.
A lot of the time I spend is with my fingers around my wrist, making sure they can touch, making sure I still have a skeleton inside me, a skeleton I will never see well enough. What is healthy and why do so many people think I am not when my lungs have enough capacity for the sighs that feel like hours?
It's so confusing being the smart friend or the funny friend and always pretty but never the pretty friend, like you are close but you have not crossed the line yet. You are special, but you are not special enough. Not enough to be anointed, to be the ONE, to be the magazine cover. But maybe you'll get a scholarship or something, that could also be... cool.
And it's almost worst if you do understand, which you do, because we all know the real truth, no matter what our GPA's say, we all understand what the TV is telling us. We all understand that it is not about a transformation, it is simply the act of succumbing to the understanding that without the impossible we are worthless. And too many of us will buy more and cry more and spend more time on our knees and not with our books and we will know it's bullshit but it won't really matter.
Lots of strong woman learned to be strong by being broken down first. And every strong woman I know still cringes when the good show with the strong female lead transitions to the commercial about the underwear model. An impossible goal. They cringe for themselves. They cringe for all of the girls they love too because they know that we will collapse into the ashes of our unattainable dream, perfect girl against a sunny beach that used to be a green backdrop, something our arms will never be long enough to reach, something that crawled out of backwards fantasies and invaded our realities with the help of Photoshop, pills, and a few too many people smiling at our self doubt."
The Average Girl's Dream
