Photo:Chloe Glass
They Want Me To Change
By Allison Hardy
They want me to change, expect me to change. They tell me to change my hair color, eye color, hair style. They tell me to change my attitude, name, my beliefs,my character, my language, my way of living. They say that I’m too fat, too slow, too nerdy, too original, too ugly, too stupid, too old-fashioned. They want me to be more. More popular, more sassy, more girly, more tough, more stuck up, more focused on how I look, more like Them.
They want to poison my mind with their empty thoughts and filthy images. They tell me how to dress: showing off every square inch of myself. They say I should be wearing shirts that show my stomach and dip so low that people can see my breasts, shorts that are shorter than underpants and swimming suits that leave nothing to the imagination. They tell me to wear so much make-up that I’m completely unrecognizable to fit in.
What he says next will never leave me.
He says, “I hate girls like that. They are so puffed up and vain. They disgust me. I like girls with high moral values, a girl that’s not afraid to stand up for what she believes in. She won’t be afraid to be herself. She’s smart and respects herself for what she knows. Someone who doesn’t want to be popular in the eyes of her classmates, but a girl that loves herself just the way she is. I want someone who has more to her then what you can see, a girl that leaves me space to wonder.”
Before this point, I had yet to hear anyone to actually speak those words out loud, and I love him for it, for not being one of Them. I’m never going to change for Them, not now not ever.
Some may call me a nerd, crazy, or abnormal, but this is what I’ll tell them: “I’m smart, confident, original, and beautiful. I’m a young teenage girl who is tired of listening to your insults. I’m not going to just sit around and let you tell me to change who I am. You might call me an outcast. You can tell me I don’t belong, but I know who I am and I will never change!”
18
They want me to change, expect me to change. They tell me to change my hair color, eye color, hair style. They tell me to change my attitude, name, my beliefs,my character, my language, my way of living. They say that I’m too fat, too slow, too nerdy, too original, too ugly, too stupid, too old-fashioned. They want me to be more. More popular, more sassy, more girly, more tough, more stuck up, more focused on how I look, more like Them.
They want to poison my mind with their empty thoughts and filthy images. They tell me how to dress: showing off every square inch of myself. They say I should be wearing shirts that show my stomach and dip so low that people can see my breasts, shorts that are shorter than underpants and swimming suits that leave nothing to the imagination. They tell me to wear so much make-up until I’m completely unrecognizable.
I sit in class alone, hearing the guy in from of me list off these exact same traits. His friends have just asked him what he likes in girls.