A Family of Three

A feminist piece I wrote for my Women's Studies class. The experiences of three separate women who belong to the same family of three.

Pretty Girl

Ever since I was a little girl I was told I was pretty. The first time a stranger told me I was pretty I was 10 years old. I suppose I was happy at the time but looking back it makes me shudder. When I turned 13 the word pretty changed to something else. Something disgusting. It changed to whistles and strangers calling me baby. To men three times my age making jokes about jailbait and my selfies in tank tops and shorts being distributed online with a statement about what's wrong with girls my age now.

When I was 15 I got b***s. They had taken a while but soon I had the biggest in my class. I was happy for a time. I felt like I had reached some threshold of womanhood. But then those men who made who made jokes about me being jailbait didn't believe me when I said I was under 18.

When I was 16 I had my first kiss. It was at a party. I played spin the bottle and it landed on another pretty girl. The boys hooted and hollered as I leaned in trying to pretend as if the blush across my cheeks was only out of embarrassment for having to kiss someone in public and not because she was the one I was trying to get the bottle to land on.

When I was 17 I got photographed for money the first time. A department store soon had pictures of me wearing their clothes all over the walls. My popularity boomed. The "hottest" guy in school asked me out. T.V. told me that I had the perfect high school life. I wanted it to be true so I said yes to the date. To the kiss. To the sex. I acted like the happiest girl in the world. Even if he was as dumb as a ton of bricks.

When I was a little girl I wanted to work for NASA. I loves the stars. I loved rockets and space. I could name every human being to ever make it off this planet. It was my dream for so long to add my name at the end of that list. But nobody made movies about female astronauts. And my face was too pretty to not be on the big screen.

Somewhere along the way I decided that modeling was the right job for me.

I graduated second in my class. I felt bad for the boy who graduated at third. He needed the salutatorian scholarship money much more than I did. I already had a job.

I continued to date the "hot" guy after high school, while I modeled and he took a "gap year". A gap year that turned into two. Then three. Eventually having a boyfriend got in the way of promotions and opportunities. I happily dumped him. I got the promotions I was promised. I ignored the rumors that I slept my way into the industry, as I moved into a new home that was bigger than the one I grew up in.

After I had gained a substantial following I asked my agent about coming out. More and more celebrities were coming out and getting positive feedback from the media and society at large. I saw more happy lesbians on T.V. then I ever thought possible. I felt as if I was lying to my fans when I kept such a large part of myself from them. Those were all the excuses I gave my agent. In reality, I had a girlfriend and I wanted to be able to take pictures with her and post them on my social media. I wanted to be able to cry about how much I loved her everywhere I possibly could. I didn't want to hide her and she didn't want to be hidden. My agent said I could do it if I really wanted to but I had to be prepared for the consequences. I said I was with a smile.

I wasn't really prepared.

I guess my life had too much good in it. I had been too lucky. It was time for the real world to catch up to me.

After I came out followers began to disappear. Comments on posted selfies changed from "You're so gorgeous!" to "You're too pretty to be a lesbian" and those are just the tame ones. Rape and death threats became common experiences. I never realized how much my male fans thought they owned me.

My girlfriend got even worse. Anytime I posted pictures of the two of us on any social media that my fans followed the comments were always; "Why do they always have to shove the fact that they're gay down our throats? They're probably just pretending because it's trendy now. Why is she dating such a fat ugly n*****?" They found her social media accounts and soon she couldn't go on any of them without bursting into tears. Eventually she had to delete them all.

It took years for the hate to die down. My fanbase changed, most of the straight males disappearing and being replaced with young queer people who thought my girlfriend and I were "relationship goals". It was shortly after this that we finally felt safe enough to announce our engagement.

A little less than a year after our wedding we decided we wanted a child. I wanted to be the one to be pregnant but my agent was against it. My wife decided to carry our child.

Except she couldn't. She miscarried three times. After her many unsuccessful attempts to get pregnant, I finally decided having a child was more important to me than my modeling career.

I didn't lose any fans because of this decision but I did lose almost all my jobs. The numbers of requests to work with me decreased at the same pace that my stomach grew. My followers convinced me to take up vlogging and I left modeling behind me forever.

My child grew up on camera. She learned she was a girl and chose a new name and wardrobe for herself on camera.

My daughter found clippings of me in magazines. "Mom, is this you?" She asked, holding out a magazine that had me on the cover in a bikini.

I didn't answer her immediately. I never actually looked like that did I? I took it from her and stared at the airbrushed and edited version of me sitting on top. "Yes, but this isn't what I actually looked like." I racked my brain for a way to talk to her about what she was seeing and how inhumanly "beautiful" they made me look.

Before I could say it though, she smiled up at me. "I know, you're much prettier than this, Mom"

No One Like Me

As I grew up I wondered if there was no one else in the world like me. I never saw a single one on T.V. so you can understand why I might think so. For a while when I was younger I tried to put a positive spin on it. I was special. Unique! But as I got older I realized I was wrong. It wasn't that I was unique, it's just that the people don't care about people like me. They wanna pretend I don't exist. I'm not pretty enough for them.

My wife doesn't quite understand. She knows but she doesn't understand. How could she, all her problems exist because she's too pretty.

When she posted the first picture of us together online she got a comment saying she was too pretty for me. I wanted to scream, "don't you think I know that? Don't you think I've told her that?"

When I was raped I was told that it was a compliment. That I was lucky anyone would want to have sex with me. I internalized it. Made it my mantra. Swallowed the words with a few too many pills.

My wife has tried hard (with the help of a therapist) to rid my of my mantra. It is working, if slowly.

The people on her social media didn't help during that period of time. I tried so hard to ignore them all. It died down eventually but not before I remembered how much our society hates me.

I'm fat. I'm black. I'm an amputee. I'm bisexual. People tell me that things have gotten better for people like me. I'm not so sure about that. I still don't see anyone like me on T.V.

My Wife is a Pretty Girl

My wife is a beautiful woman. This opinion is not solely my own. It is a widely accepted fact that she is beautiful. Her thousands of followers are proof enough.

No matter how beautiful she is, though, the world still tells her she is not good enough.

The first time I picked up a magazine that she was in I was furious. It took hours for me to calm down.

I knew her body. Every inch of it. And those images in that f*****g magazine was not her body. Parts of it were her, sure. But her eyes were too big and too blue, devoid of the slight green that should be there. Her hair was too blonde. The scar on her abdomen from when she had her appendix removed was gone. She was too thin and her thighs were half their actual size.

She was the most beautiful woman I had ever met and they still thought she had to be changed. Fixed.

What does that say about how society views me?

Boss

I own a small business. Specifically a small construction business. One thing I've discovered in my time as a small business owner is to not make my face the face of the company. In the time that my face was on the billboards and in the commercials I nearly went bankrupt. But shortly after I removed my face from the company's image more work started coming in. Then I put the face of my second in command (a moderately attractive white man) as the face of the company and business grew even more.

Daughter

I can never be as pretty as my mom. I know this for a fact. No matter how many hormones I take I'll never be like her. I'll never get to live a life like hers. No one would pay me to be a model. My school wouldn't even let me model for their fashion show fundraiser.

And I'll never look like Mama at all. I have her last name but none of her blood in me.

No One Like Me Reprise

I can never see a person like me on T.V.

There are no little girls with male bodies and two mothers shown on T.V.

Father

I don't have a father.

My class gets it. But my teachers don't seem to understand.

They treat me as if I'm sad or broken because of it.

Someone once told me that the reason I was a "f*****" was because I didn't have a father to "set me straight" and "make me a real man".

The first time I ever feared for my life was when I told him I wasn't a man at all.

Pretty Girl Reprise

I cried the first time someone aside from my mothers called me pretty.

I was 13. It was a little girl who looked at me in awe. She said nothing when I started to cry. Only wrapped her small arms around me and squeezed as if to force the tears back in. I had never felt more beautiful in my life.

The second time someone told me I was pretty was when I was 17 and had my first ever date with a boy. When he picked me up he told me I looked pretty and at the end of the date he kissed me.

It was shortly after that, that a writer from a magazine came to me and asked if they could take my picture.