Warning: This work has been rated 16+ for language and mature content.
When we were little, we used to play dress up.
We used to put on
the spectrum makeup and pretend we were someone else.
Wearing different clothes,
faces hidden under our mother’s vivid colored lipstick.
Until we heard her say “Wash up, it’s time for lunch!”
Then we’d scrub the plaster off,
reverting back to the only self we knew.
Brightly colored smudges of childhood lining the sink.
But then we got older.
We started to see ourselves,
not as who we were,
but as everyone had told us to be.
We took on what was forced onto us.
Whether it be an image,
or a man.
There was no fight, with promises of a better you.
Examples lined the streets and infested television monitors.
We grew up.
Molded ourselves to mimic the women we saw.
On poorly lit billboards
doubled over toilets and surrounded by empty bottles,
barely clothed, draped over beds like satin sheets.
Waiting to be used.
Everyday we wake up
and mold the clay of our bodies,
to please everyone and no one in particular.
We’ve withered and burned to become
the flimsy promises of
Pretty.
Desirable.
Perfect.
We cling to a layer of concealer,
embellished with pretty golden eyes,
sweet rosy cheeks,
dark, mysterious lashes
and trademark seductive colors of sin,
waxy lipstick sealing our mouths.
Don’t open your mouth.
Unless it’s to giggle
or blow.
No one wants to be perceived as
anything other than normal.
Oh! Promises of stunning?
Gorgeous?
Irresistible?
Join the others in eating disorder group discussion.
When we came home as tear streaked faces
our mothers would soothe our tongues
that burned with words like fat and ugly.
Now we bare the labels like scars,
tattooed by our own lips.
When slut or bitch travel
into decorated ears,
we don’t even bat a pretty blue eye.
The wild haired, child in the mirror is missing.
The truth is that the smile has faded
from our deceiving red lips
and the golden glimmer
Has long been eradicated
from our once curious, trusting eyes.
We spoke honestly, not in pretty, air-headed prose.
We loved how dress up was a game,
but we never let it overpower us.
Now it’s a battle to apply the mask each day
and cover a face we no longer recognize.
War is routinely fending off hungry hands from your body.
It’s being groped at age 15 and asking what you did wrong.
Maybe one day we will be able to find ourselves
through all the layers of plastered propaganda.
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Canary word: Present
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125,030 Literary Works • 672,904 Reviews
Hey, Sky! I was looking for poems to review considering I'm close to a star, and I came upon this even though it wasn't one you told me to review, and I figured I'd finish reviewing your portfolio. Let's take flight!
The first thing I noticed is you use a lot of absolute statements, and I think you could do better. Try setting a scene in third person, without using he or she, try it and things like that, and describe what you're wanting to convey. Not the people, or the places, more of the emotion you're wanting to get across, and go from there. Now take that, and insert yourself into it, little pigments of you and how you feel. I think you could really get a lot from it, and I think that it can help.
The other thing that I noticed was the inconsistent capitalization. I would say pick one or the other and try not to have them as random as they are, but that could just be me and that's just personal preference.
Anyway, overall you have a lot of emotion here but I feel like you could use aa few tweaks, and I think you'll get there.
That's really all I have to say on this one and I hope it helped.
Keep on doing what you're doing and keep on keeping on.
Sincerely, GooseLuck
Hi! This is Horseswrite here for a Review on Review Day! Oh my gosh!! this is an amazing poem! I have nothing really wrong to say here! I love how you share anything you think without holding back, I love that! I have a question though, why are the stanza situated like that? One is out and one is back toward the beginning, and I really don't follow why?? I'm sorry if this offends you and if I say anything that offends you, please tell me. Also, I love how it is so easy to relate to and how you explain most of modern society. I love it!!! Great Job! I can't wait to see more of your writing in the future!
"I'm just going to call your chill Error 404- that junk is NOWHERE to be found." - Me, directly following me reading this poem, 2016
Yeesh! Okay, where do I start...uh...let's just...er...WHOA.
Initial shock from one of the best works of poetry I've read aside, I appreciate the message you're trying to send. I know (looking from the perspective of the stunt driver who saw a trained pilot crash into a tree) how difficult it must be to be told how to act, look, and feel, especially when it comes to women. It upsets me slightly that people can subliminally force each other into certain mindsets or actions via non-acceptance.
BUT! (please understand that I'm not bashing your point here, I'm just saying this because I have been for a long time.)
I have a question for you. Do you believe that it's the fault of the ones who spread propaganda about women that more of them are becoming like the ones described in your poem, or is it the fault of women (and/or heavily impressionable small children) who can't develop a resistance to non-physical/non-chemical alteration to their lifestyle?
It's just...to me, propaganda about the way women should be can be compared to how bullies in a middle school can spread rumors and jeer and do whatever they want to you because they want you to be a certain way, but in the end, it's up to the victim to decide for themselves whether or not they'll let the abuse affect them. I myself have been bullied throughout every grade since 3rd because of my Asperger's (something contemporary African American children have little to no idea how to cope with, thus they instinctively repel it, not that I'm going to get into it that much because I don't like racial discussions.), but it was only when I was an impressionable little kid that I took the abuse to heart and not only almost offed myself, but also went through a crisis lasting three years of whether I should live or stay alive.
Now that I'm slightly above teenage and have learned to control my emotions and analyze most situations, I've found it a lot easier to deal with jeers, hatred, and bullying in general by simply taking it at surface level.
Propaganda and bullying aren't anything but heavily repeated suggestions that it's not your job to eliminate- but rather just say "Okay." to and leave.
I suppose what I'm saying is that yeah, while people telling each other how to behave isn't necessarily the most beneficiary thing for anyone subject to it, it is also up to the victims to build a resistance to it and learn for themselves what they believe to be a truth and what they believe to be a fallacy.
Now, as I previously stated, this is not to bash your point that propaganda makes some women into sad corruptions bound by their own actions and words, but what this is is just my own take on the point you made, my Pathos aside.
Thanks for writing this piece, and have fun with your future writing!
Hey there! Thanks for the review. I'm glad you brought up this point! It isn't one way or another in my eyes, although this is a slightly a biased piece. I strongly agree that part of the issue is how people react to things like this. This piece was a critique on society and on how people who take the pressure react to it. I'm glad to hear that you have learned ways to deal with this. I see both the propaganda and people's reaction in coexistence, but my poem was mainly to critique the reason people have to learn to cope with these things. That is mass media and things of that nature. Thank you for your lovely review, and please tell me if you would like me to work in the other side of this to be more prominent.
Hey there! clogs here to review!
You have some really powerful imagery here. Your word choice does a great job at getting the emotion across to the readers, so I applaud you for that. You've definitely made your point clearly and with conviction! You also did a good job of using consistent punctuation and capitalization, so applause there too.
I think I'm mainly going to talk about organization in this review. To me, the main problem with this poem is that it gets a little rambly. I feel like there are places where you can cut back, and get the idea across using fewer words. For instance (and I've noticed this in some of your other works too), you have a habit of making a statement, then repeating that statement with more words added at the end to elaborate. Some examples:
It kind of feels like a grab for drama that ends up being redundant instead. Is there really a point to making a whole new sentence out of "pretend"? In poetry, it's good to avoid redundancies as much as possible. When you're using so few words, then make sure every word counts. Just make sure you're watching yourself while writing and catching yourself when you start to do this.
The short line breaks aren't really doing it for me. It's quite a narrative style of poetry, so the short line breaks feel choppy and random more than anything. You could experiment with some other things, like longer lines or even just moving the lines around a bit more so it's a bit more of a nontraditional style. It also looks a little bit messy because of the double spacing. You've got it split into stanzas, but you could take another step and make it single spaced by pressing "shift" and "enter" at the same time in the YWS publisher.
In case it's not clear by what I mean when I say "single spaced": The format I'm talking about is like the one used in this poem:
Spilled
It just looks a lot cleaner and neater to me, although it is personal preference.
This stanza felt out of place to me, and I think it was because it was in second person. The rest of the poem is in third person; it's telling your personal story. This stanza began to directly address the reader, so it felt out of place. I also didn't really feel like it added too much- another thing to think about when editing. Does everything you say add something new to further the reader's understanding of the poem?
The use of "sooth" here was very odd. It was phrased so that initially I thought that "sooth" was the action being done by the words, so I was confused for a minute. You could rephrase this a number of ways to remove this confusion- for instance, "Our mothers soothed the hurtful words" or something like that. That way, it's clear that the mothers are doing the soothing.'
Also, when thinking about how to remove unnecessary words: "Used to be" could easily be replaced with "were". That's two fewer words, so it feels more concise while still getting the same point across. Think about things like this while editing.
When I first read this, it struck me as odd because there's not a spot in the poem where you asked before, so why would you be asking "again"? I suppose the title counts, but I usually think of titles as outside the world of the poem, so it was just weird to me. I'm also not a fan of ending the poem with a question. I prefer to let readers ask questions on their own, rather than feeding them questions. Maybe end with some last observation about how different things are now, to leave the reader with something juicy to ponder.
Overall, I think the main thing to work on would be finding a way to make all your words meaningful. You have some great imagery, which is a powerful way to get ideas across, but try to avoid rambling. Don't say more than you need to.
I enjoyed reading this, and I hope this review proved useful to you in some way! Keep up the great work!
Thank you so much for your review! My poem seemed long and choppy when I posted it. I was stuck and in need of revisions. You helped me out! I've revised a few things. Let me know what else I could work on!