Beauty Hurts

Rather old, a look at how the beauty myth can tear apart self image.

Every time I look into the mirror, I see her. I see her, bloated and ugly, grinning back at me madly. She fills me with disgust, with hate and dismay. I want her gone.

I haven’t eaten. I can’t remember the last time I kept something inside me for more then fifteen minutes. I can’t do it, not with that thing grinning at me madly.

So that’s why I found myself sprawled out in my bathroom, shoving my fingers down my throat. I coughed, gagged, and vomited up whatever little I had managed to eat, without them laughing at me. I know they laugh, laugh at how I eat, how I can’t stop. That’s why I don’t. Then they can’t laugh.

I stand up, shakily, and stumbled back to my room, examine myself in the full body mirror on my closet door. I’m sixteen. I have no chest now, no hips, nothing to my thighs. There is nothing.

I look so much better famished.

I twirl; watch my skirt fly, then fall down. I have no energy to move. I can’t even get up, I know that. I lean against the wall and keep looking at myself.

Then she’s back again, grinning madly, down at me. She’s huge. She’s me. And I don’t want her to be me, never.

I suddenly want my fingers shoved down my throat again. I want to vomit up all my ugliness. I want to be pretty. More then anything I want to be pretty.

I force myself up, cling to the wall as I stumble to my dresser and sit down. I was lucky, my legs can’t always carry me this far. I pull out my make up and begin to paint my face, make it perfect. There’s so much foundation you can no longer see my real skin.

All the better, it was ugly. If I could, I would paint my skin and make it perfect, tattoo it into beauty.

I look at the tools I have. Tweezer, these things that look like scalpels. I have no idea what most of them are used for, but mother gave them to me for my sweet sixteen. She said I was a woman; these would help me achieve that.

And to be a woman I had to be beautiful.

I start to pull at my eyebrows, already paper thin. I was going to pull them out completely, paint them on anew.

But I didn’t stop. I took the scalpel like tool into my hand and dug into my cheek, stabbing through skin and tissue. It hurt, sure, but beauty hurts, it hurts like hell.

I kept going, carving into my face, making these holes that oozed blood. I watched it run down my face, the perfect red. I wish my lips were that color. I swiped a finger through the warm liquid and spread it over my lips. There. Perfect color.

I set the tool down and peered into the mirror. My face was now covered with holes, my skin stretching like ripped nylon. I looked like a corpse, dark bags under my eyes, skin clinging to my bones. No fat or muscle to protect me, and now no skin to shield me.

I grinned madly as the room began to spin, and I felt faint. I was finally beautiful.

Author's Note

This work isn't anything great, but I would like to have my complete library here, so I'm posting it.