I Am Yet To Have My Say

My story is not finished.

Has my narrative ever truly been my own, walked by my own two dainty feet and felt in this impossibly corseted gut?

It has been rewritten to suit the changing time and values, molded over chameleon decades to a more glamorous image, a more politically correct one, a socially aware one, an empowered one. I have contributed to the war effort, been obsessed with the correctness of a poodle skirt, burned my bra in protest (or divested of it in the giddy pursuit of B-film magic). I have danced the night away, afro-fabulous and gold-lamed, trusting, along with everyone else, that the heady thunk of disco would never end. I have survived acid wash and gravity-defying hair. I have catapulted to the cosmos and beyond, never-failingly perky and cheerful, every last bit of my 36-17-34 physique reverent in my given purpose. I am mother, lover, priestess-confessor, guardian, and friend. I have been a fantasy, a nightmare, a mission, an excuse. I am the snake in the Feminist Movement's garden of Eden.

I would boast that I am every woman, but my self-loathing has caught up to my deceit. If I permit you to divulge my secrets you will find only this: everything I have ever represented has been at the command of society's (read: men's) whims.

As the sequined-pink song goes, " I'm a Barbie girl, in a Barbie world," only I have become fantastic at the expense of my dignity.

Has the era arrived, all too late, for me to fashion the headstone to my own posterity? Will I do myself, my brethren made in my image, justice?

I must own my tarnished history. All of me is everything imprinted--desired or not.

My tale to this point has not been my own, but even fluff fiction can be rewritten.