The Life Story Of A Woman | Teen Ink

The Life Story Of A Woman MAG

By Anonymous

   When you are born you are always the most beautiful baby. Your parents take you home knowing that you will be a perfect little girl. And for a while, you are. You are content to play in the backyard with the neighbors' kids.

In fact all goes fine until you're 10 years old and you innocently pick up a Sweet Valley Twins book from the bookstore. Suddenly, you are confronted with the radical idea that despite what your parents have been telling you for the past decade, you are not quite perfect.

You may have been called "skinny as a beanstalk" many times but you notice your wrist is thicker than the character Jessica Wakefield, and your heart sinks. Maybe you even grew up believing you were pretty, but you don't have eyes as round or hair as glossy as Barbie.

This is not a stage you will soon grow out of. It gets even worse. In junior high, your legs were called hairy by other girls and so you begin shaving them every night. Will someone please tell me exactly when hair became unfeminine?

You learn a new word, calorie, and how to count them. In the Sweet Valley books the skinniest, blondest girls get the boys. The idea is pretty simple. Unfortunately, you have brown hair and a round body. The magazine Young Miss tells you Kate Moss is beautiful and you don't doubt it.

So you diet the quickest way you know how: by starving yourself or binging and puking. Finally, a boy asks you out. You accept immediately. It doesn't matter to you that you never talked to him before. He's your boyfriend and having a boyfriend is very important. Now new problems arise. Yesterday, he got angry when you offered to help him with his math. When he asks, you deny that you always get an A in math. Instead you claim you only got a C+ last quarter. You try to convince yourself that you don't understand the material in any course. Sadly, you do.

Soon you are in high school. It matters little that you've known how to cook for years. You take Home Economics because that's what girls take. Every morning, you tirelessly apply colored grease and liquid to your face until you look as close to a model as you can manage. You're still dieting and that image of bone-thin Jessica Wakefield is still floating around somewhere in the back of your hairsprayed head.

Your parents are worried and tell you that you don't eat enough. But they are so wrong. You remember they used to tell you that you were pretty.

Now we skip ahead 25 years. You are middle-aged and have that nagging feeling that you have to lose 10 pounds. Your husband whom you love so much works all day. When he comes home, his dinner is on the table, hot. You had to get a job to help pay the mortgage but it's still your job to cook dinner. But that's how it is supposed to work, everyone knows that. In every issue of Women's Day, there are six pages of recipes. In your husband's Sports Illustrated, there are no recipes nor child care tips. No one ever declared Sport's Illustrated a man's magazine but the swimsuit issue models sure make it hard for a female athlete to enjoy it.

Today, your 10-year-old refused to eat dinner. Yesterday you found a copy of a Sweet Valley Twins book on her dresser. You wonder what's going on.

I bet Elizabeth and Jessica Wakefield are having a good laugh right now. And if Barbie were the size of a human, her proportions would land her in the emergency room. But she'd be a supermodel. And you'd dream of being her.



Similar Articles

JOIN THE DISCUSSION

This article has 7 comments.


i love this so much!

on Jan. 10 2011 at 4:08 pm
Maddyandsnoopy GOLD, Rocklin, California
10 articles 18 photos 17 comments

Favorite Quote:
"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter."
-Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

That's true. I did a persuasive essay on why Barbie is a bad role model one time, and not only would she have to crawl, her waist would be so small that she wouldn't be able to menstruate, let alone have children!

on Nov. 29 2010 at 2:07 pm
BlackKittie SILVER, Milwaukee, Wisconsin
8 articles 1 photo 55 comments

i really like this!its very true.

everyone, go home and look through your pile of old 17 magazines.i promise the biggest words on that cover will be "look pretty fast" "look pretty now" or "look pretty at every party"


on May. 6 2010 at 9:31 am
ClaraZornado GOLD, Danielson, Connecticut
10 articles 11 photos 11 comments

Favorite Quote:
"Your life is your art." Keri Smith

This is excellent.

on Mar. 11 2010 at 8:06 pm
purplegurl523 SILVER, BROOKLYN, New York
6 articles 0 photos 25 comments

Favorite Quote:
"Fists in the air, hands on your hair!" ~My math teacher

Really amazing...and scarily accurate! you capture the female's feelings exactly! well done!

on Mar. 11 2010 at 8:01 pm
ElephantGirl523 SILVER, Brooklyn, New York
6 articles 0 photos 37 comments

Favorite Quote:
"Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don't matter, and those who matter don't mind." -Theodor Geisel

I loved your writing style. Honestly, this is the best opinion piece I've ever read. You are an amazing writer.

on Mar. 11 2010 at 6:35 pm
sunnyhunny PLATINUM, Litchfield, New Hampshire
22 articles 3 photos 329 comments

Favorite Quote:
"An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind."
-Ghandi

This is great! And true! I heard that with barbie's porportions she would actually have to walk on four legs.