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Call Her By Her Talents — Don’t Call Her Pretty
This is a tale of a young girl growing up in a land of endless opportunities but an abundance of invisible obstacles.
A story about a girl who was raised being told how to act and dress based on her gender. Constantly having ideas of beauty embedded in her subconscious through the Barbie dolls she was encouraged to play with. Looking closely at the Barbie, either relating to her features or feeling as though she was a complete alien in comparison.
A girl who turned on the television to watch another episode of Paw Patrol but in between the show was bombarded with commercials of tall, thin women describing what it meant to be “beautiful.”
A girl that internalized these standards of beauty, and never realized she was seeking moments in her life that confirmed these ideas that beauty mattered most. Like the time her parents wouldn’t let her go to ballet class without her hair neatly in a bun. Or the time the kids at school told her she was ugly and everyone stopped talking to her. Or maybe the time the most beautiful person in the world, her mother, called herself fat when she thought no one was looking.
A girl who entered high school, having already been on several diets to try to look more like her “skinny friends” or the women she saw on TV. Diets trends that never seemed to work, and…
