[Y]oung Writers Project, an independent nonprofit based in Burlington, engages young people to write and use digital media to express themselves with clarity and power, and to gain confidence and skills for school, the workplace and life.
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Each week, VTDigger features a writing submission – an essay, poem, fiction or nonfiction – accompanied by a photo or illustration from Young Writers Project.
YWP publishes about 1,000 students’ work each year here, in newspapers across Vermont, on Vermont Public Radio and in YWP’s monthly digital magazine, The Voice. Since 2006, it has offered young people a place to write, share their photos, art, audio and video, and to explore and connect online at youngwritersproject.org. For more information, please contact Susan Reid at sreid@youngwritersproject.org.
From the moment of birth, children of both sexes experience the implicit and explicit pressures of a gendered society forcing them into particular roles. Contrary to the expectations of men, young women have long been taught that outward beauty and quiet subservience are the sole determining factors of their worth. This week’s Weybridge poet Narges Anzali acknowledges these outdated stereotypes, but in breaking them down reveals the dramatic toll they take on mental and physical health. The day a woman first finds herself apathetic to another’s compliments, Anzali posits, is likely to be the best day of her life.
Tear Yourself Apart
By Narges Anzali, 14
[T]ell her that she’s beautiful
and watch her smile as
she devours the compliment up,
lapping at every last honey drop
on her fingers because she’s
been starved for so long,
and what is a girl without
other people to tell her
the value that she has?
Tell her that she’s skinny
and she will beam before
looking in the mirror and tracing
the outline of her ribs with
her paper fingers, half human,
half ghost, so thin she’s almost gone,
though hunger was never beautiful,
nor this animal eating her up from inside.
Tell her that she’s hot and
look at her short skirt like it’s
the only part of her that matters, and she’ll
shoot you a grin before tugging down
her dress as a sense of anxiety creeps
into her mind, because everyone knows
what happens to girls with too-short dresses
walking alone at night,
so she grips her keys between her fingers and
holds them tight.
Tell her that she’s being
too emotional, that she just needs to
calm down, and she will clench her fists
and slowly listen to the breath
filling up her lungs, and smile,
because girls with anger are easily dismissed,
because any sign of emotion will
get you laughed at, but be serious instead and they
will call you soulless, so she goes back
to balancing her personality on a knife’s edge.
Tell her that she wouldn’t understand,
and turn away so you don’t see the rage slowly
filling up her eyes until she’s almost blind,
because you could have had a mind filled
with the most beautiful things but now you’ve
got yourself an enemy who knows how
to hide all her thoughts behind a demure smile
as she stabs you in the back, because little girls
are trained in the art of lying and
sabotage from the moment they first step into a school.
Tell her that she’s everything you’ve ever needed
and she’ll beam like the sun, but she
won’t ever know that human beings should never
be needed like water, or food, or shelter,
for it is not your responsibility to keep someone alive,
and she should be wanted, like something sweet you
can’t quite resist, but she’ll let you
pull her further down with you because she’s been taught
that that is right.
Tell her that she’s not like other girls
and she will feel a moment of pride, because
that’s the highest compliment you can get, isn’t it,
“You have that body of a girl, but you aren’t one,”
so she’ll try to squeeze herself into a box for you,
try to grow into all the hard edges for you, because
if she’s not like the other girls, she won’t let
herself grow soft like all the others you disdain,
and she’ll press herself in for a lifetime if she needs to
just to gain your approval.
Tell her,
tell her,
tell her.
And watch as she dies with each little word.
You will find her in the way she’s a little hunched over,
you will find her in bruised-up knuckles,
you will find her in wide and terrified eyes,
you will find her in little white lies.
We tear ourselves apart to satisfy
the world,
until we’re turned inside out,
hollow on the inside.
One day you’ll tell her she’s beautiful,
and she won’t even care,
and that’ll be the best day of her life.
