grlhood

[grlhoodpgh]

grlhood

redefining the "I" / here I am

We ask girls, including non-cis and trans youth, to send us creative work that reflects on what girlhood means to them: how they might define girlhood, how their girlhood might define (or not define) them, reflections on their social position as a girl, and the connection or disconnection they might feel to feminine communities. Then we ask rising and established writers to read these pieces and respond with their own work. A collaborative conversation emerges from these exchanges—spanning various generations, genres, forms, identities, and ideas—beginning from within girlhood and launching into a post-stratospheric space of exciting uncertainty.

These poems and essays consider femininity, sexuality, aspirations, passions, trials, pain, histories and futures, as well as responsibilities as local and global citizens. Girlhood asserts itself across this collection as beautifully complicated and varied, synonymous with infinite possibility. They encourage and reinforce each other's validity, and are all the more powerful when presented together.

Read more about our project. Continue to grlhood...

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To Be, As I Am

By Valerie Wu, age 15

I’ve always had difficulty distinguishing between the verbs savoir and connaître. Elementary explanations taught me that savoir meant to know. In French lessons, one of my peers described it as having the instinctual feeling of simply knowing, the way you just know your mother’s your mother. The verb connaître, though, was different. It was to be familiar with something, to have a relationship on a personal level. For me, the conjugation for connaître became as familiar as the word itself.

When I think about it now, being familiar with something is on a more intense level than just knowing it. My girlhood was characterized by oppression, the implicit kind that comes with naivety and not knowing my position as a girl of color. In today’s America, I’m familiar with the way I’m viewed—people tend to confine my character within a box, much like the heroes are always the extroverts, the ones that are brave on the outside. I know the implications of the color of my skin and my identity as a female. When I was younger, I told myself that one day I would be President of the United States, only for others to tell me that I wasn’t “pretty” enough. And over time, I grew accustomed to these interpretations of my character. I wasn’t the protagonist of my own novel; I was a sidekick. It wasn’t just knowing anymore, it was an intimate kind of familiarity that thrived in times of insecurity. Sometimes I didn’t want to be a female, a yellow girl undeniably tied to my ethnicity and gender. There weren’t a lot of women like me in influential places; I had a relationship with that concept on a personal level. For me, that was something ugly, something that took its hold inside of me and made me believe that there was nothing I could do about it.

It took me a long time to acknowledge the fact that my narrative was being stifled. As a girl of color, I think that there’s beauty in the power of privilege—the privilege that implies there’s only one space for females in modern society: on the sidelines. But beauty also comes from recognition that there’s so much more than that. Yes, I’m a female. But I don’t have to be “pretty” in the traditional sense to prove that I am; I can be strong and self-sufficient. I’m no big, strong hero, but I’m independent and I don’t need others to save me from the realities of society. I know that, just as I know that I love myself as I am, a girl of color just wanting to effect change someday. By accepting that, I’ve released myself from the box others have put me in. To me, that’s an intersectional definition of girlhood--a state of being that breaks barriers.

I’ve always been familiar with the power of words; they cause wars, they start relationships, they form mutual understandings. I didn’t truly realize their power until I grew aware of my own. Now, I think I finally understand; I’m not one of the indirect objects I learned about so many times in French lessons. The sentence refers to me. I’m être, to be.

Valerie’s use of the French verbs “savoir” and “connaître” to explore race and identity reminds me of the work of multidisciplinary artist and writer Theresa Hak Kyung Cha. Cha was born in 1951 in Busan, South Korea during the Korean War and educated in the U.S. and France. She was fluent in Korean, French and English. Her work often used all three. As an artist she was familiar with the ways in which narrative can be fragmented and suppressed. Her novel Dictée uses the form of the dictation exercise to examine the relationship between war, colonization, exile and her own Korean-American identity.

At 28, I still struggle with the issues that Valerie writes about: the sense of being a sidekick in my own story, the question of whether or not I am “pretty enough” to survive in a society that privileges white beauty. What does it mean to be a strong, confident woman of color when every boyfriend I have ever had has gone on to date or marry a white woman after me? Of course, these choices have nothing to do with my self-worth. They are old hurts reinforced by dominant narratives.

In “To Be, As I Am” part of the healing process comes from self-love and acceptance. bell hooks, quoting psychiatrist M. Scott Peck in her book All About Love, defines love as “the will to extend one’s self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth”. She goes on to say that, “Love is as love does. Love is an act of will - namely, both an intention and an action”. Love implies choice and agency.

As Valerie writes, “I’m not one of the indirect objects I learned about so many times in French lessons”. This is a writer who has taken narrative into her own hands. She has discovered writing as a form of self-determination. I’m grateful that she’s shared her journey with us. Valerie’s declaration is simple. She says: I am a girl of color. I exist.

– Jen Lue

Read Jen Lue's Some Notes on Beauty

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Some Notes on Beauty

By Jen Lue

1. In therapy, my therapist and I discuss what men want in a woman. “A blank canvas to project on,” is one proposed response. “Something to own,” is another.

2. In her essay An argument about beauty, Susan Sontag writes, “The best theory of beauty is its history. Thinking about the history of beauty means focusing on its deployment in the hands of specific communities.”

3. Deployment: A solid, military word for what we’ve been told is a delicate, intangible thing.

4. Deployment: As a teenager I tried different tactics to make myself beautiful. As a Chinese-American girl growing up in white, middle class suburbs “beauty” meant white girls with blonde hair and blue eyes. White girls with bare legs peddling bicycles up hills. White girls with white boyfriends, talking on the phone, kicking their feet in the air.

5. Deployment: At 16 I started applying warm saltwater to my eyelids before bed to make them look bigger - puffy and inflamed. I used dark brown eye shadow to highlight the crease in my double eyelid. I took antibiotics to treat my acne. Thick white creams dosed with clindamycin. Doxycycline pills taken twice a day.

6. My mother immigrated to the U.S. when she was 32. Back in her hometown of Ningbo she was a graduate student in Japanese literature. In the U.S. she worked as a waitress and a nanny. When I turned six she went to night school to become a beautician. Throughout my teens, my mother helped me with my beauty routine. She put brown highlights in my hair and permed it. She waxed the hair above my upper lip and steamed my face over a bowl of hot water to open my pores. Sometimes I hated her for the attention she paid to my appearance. She reinforced the idea that there was something that needed to be fixed.

7. Toni Morrison wrote her first novel, The Bluest Eye, as a meditation on racial self-hatred. In the book the protagonist - a black girl from a poor family - prays for blue eyes. I read The Bluest Eye in one sitting. In an analysis of Morrison’s work, one scholar wrote that, “One’s visibility depends upon one’s beauty”.

8. Deployment: In romantic relationships I often felt an odd sense of triangulation. I was an invisible figure standing on the outside, looking in. As a girl I never saw any women who looked like me on TV or in the movies - laughing, having relationships, drinking coffee. A problem of representation. When men finally did look at me I could never quite shake the feeling that they were looking past me towards someone else. I thought maybe beautiful women felt this way too - to be beautiful meant you owed the viewer something.

9. From Reginald Shepherd’s Notes towards Beauty: “Beauty calls to beauty, after all, though beauty also demands an audience, an audience that is presumably not beautiful; otherwise it would contemplate itself”.

10. Sontag writes that the “ascription of beauty is never unmixed with moral values”. Nobody understands this better than a woman of color, whose beauty (if it is said to exist) is set in contrast to the “norm”. I used to say that I looked good in photographs but only accidentally.

11. Is beauty something that you are or something that you own? All of the attempts to dismantle beauty, all of the Dove commercials (the perfect marriage of beauty and capital), all of the quotes that say “Beauty is only skin deep” only go so far for me. Beauty works best when it is trying to sell me something.

12. When I was younger I thought my mother was beautiful. She had pale white skin that she kept soft and hydrated with bottles of white cream. She wore double layers of pantyhose to protect her stomach from the cold. Her bathroom vanity was spread with hairbrushes and make-up kits. When I couldn’t sleep at night I would climb into bed and rub my hands on her bare, white arms. They were cool to the touch and this motion always soothed me.

13. The Chinese character for beauty is 美 (mei / mĕi). Beauty is an element in the Chinese word for America. Mĕiguó = Beautiful Country.

14. As girls we were taught that Helen was the beauty whose face launched a thousand ships. The etymology of Helen’s name = Venus, the sun, the moon, a torch, a country. Helen for Hellenistic, the Greeks. Helen = Beauty = a country.

15. I gave up learning Chinese in the eighth grade. On a recent trip home, I sat across from my mother while she transcribed a piece of writing onto a piece of paper in Chinese. My mother has beautiful handwriting. Her script is firm and controlled. When I watch her write sometimes I can’t help but start crying. It is a symbol of all the parts of my mother I can’t access.

16. What is beautiful? Your mother writing poetry to you in a language you don’t understand.

Read Valerie Wu's To Be, As I Am

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The R Word

Content warning: sexual assault, rape

By Megan Williams, age 17

When your boyfriend hits you for the first time, a harsh slap that echoes around the room and imprints on your cheek, your stranglehold grip on sanity will begin to loosen. You’ll look in the mirror and find him as shocked as you are; who are those people, staring back? The wild-eyed girl with handprint skin and the boy with lips he’s chewed through a thousand times, where did they come from? You don’t recall letting them in.

When your friends ask what you’ve done to make him so angry instead of inquiring about your safety the world shudders beneath your feet and your stuttering mouth will search for the appropriate response. Apologies feel like a foreign language but excuses march off your tongue like soldiers, even when you’re shielding someone you do not recognize any longer.

There’s a bridge between his house and yours; you’ve walked it a thousand times, but today is a rare commodity. The sun beats down and adds sweat to the mix, you are dripping blood that squishes with each step. A group of teenage boys walk past your sobbing figure and laugh. This is why you go home and cry in the shower instead of the police station, this is why you plaster red lipstick on like you didn’t leave a red trail to follow already, miles and miles running down the drain. This is why you take black thread and sew your lips together, tuck your arms around your middle and kiss the same boy who wiped blood that was weeping out of your body all over your sullied mouth.

He had a cross above his bed. You remember seeing it in strange flashes, your eyes reduced to small slits after the headboard connected with your lovely skull. The first time you read tarot cards with his face in mind, your red fingernails touched The Lovers and Death. You ignored the hooded skeleton in favor of the man wrapping his painted arms around a pastel girl, a hummingbird in his strong hands. You burn them all in a metal trashcan, eyes hollow at the ferocious flame. You don’t have any crucifixes to blame. You are hesitant to say it yet-- he has a temper, you supply, he was confused, you try, but never he raped me. You cannot make yourself believe the truth; he made you pancakes a few days earlier. He writes poems about your smile.

You are scrambling backwards to the same bed you were defiled on, you are seeking sanctuary in a contaminated coffin because fear used to taste like handprint skin and green bruises but today the flavor’s been altered. Fear glints through bamboo blinds and reflects on a golden soccer trophy gripped in your boyfriend’s hands, fear convulses with each footstep forward, it is the clarity in which you can think he is going to kill me he is GOING TO KILL ME HE IS GOING TO--

People always say you would look nice as a redhead. You’ve seen how blood looks matted into your scalp, crimson liquid dripping into your eyes. You do not wish to recreate the image.

The next day you tell him to never contact you again. Your friends glare at your shaking hands and bloody lips, they accuse you of insensitivity, of not recognizing how callous it is to break a boy’s heart over the phone. He broke a trophy over your skull, but they can’t be bothered to mind; you swallow your rage and let it mingle with the rot inside. How do you tell people with ideals stone-aged and serrated that your life is more important than common courtesy?

You sleep with the lights on and lock the doors nine times when you are without him. Every day waking reverts you back to deep blue sheets and a pounding headache, back to impurity and the months when your worth was chained to the hand of a boy who beat you senseless. Your dead-eyed stare has gone unnoticed because people do not believe the gory details even as you sob your way through the story; you stop writing poetry because no combination of pretty words can change someone’s mind. Nothing can undo the remnants of terror that tarnish your body.

On February 14th, you try and scrub the handprints off of your skin. Your romance movie is a horror in disguise but the killer is the protagonist; you’re fighting against yourself and the terrible way his words are sewn into your skin like sinewy snakes coursing through your thighs. It’s been months and you cannot let go. There is a reason hurricanes have names, and you live awfully close to the most devastating storm a fifteen year old girl could encounter. There must be something in your blood that pleads hurt me; why else would your name become synonymous with Victim? Why else would you take savage pleasure in peeling apart your flesh, letting irreverent tongues lash at your open wounds and bend your broken bones further backwards?

When your best friend kisses your rapist, your fingertips stop scrambling for normalcy and you let yourself fall further into sickness. Your life is an eternal loop of the day you lost your mind, trapped underneath a boy who was supposed to love you, trapped underneath a man taking everything from you, trapped underneath a monster whose harsh breaths haunt you to this day. You were young for an infinity and a moment, but this cruel concession of remembrance haunts like forgotten lovers separated too soon, and she’s still got her lips attached to his. You wonder if it is too crass to question her about how your blood tastes.

Everyone calls you The Girl Who Cried Rape. You hang plastic stars on your ceiling and count the ways the world could end. There aren’t enough.

When you see the loving couple, one small redhead with a snappable neck and one hazy war story of a boy, console yourself with the thought of pulling out each yellow tooth and grinding it to dust beneath your fingers. Make your hands hammers and his bones brittle fossils, exercise your control like you would brandish a whip, remember the plights that plagued you when his house was the place you went to be buried. Dig up your fifteen year old body, rotting for a year now, rescue your bones from the graveyard he calls home, from the place where you withered away in chains masquerading as a heavy handed teenage boy. There is no limit to the corners of your life he has desecrated, but you cannot keep decaying in radioactive fallout. Drag your body back home.

When he comes to find you after he’s graduated, invading your school, your broken voice finds sound again, your tongue finds purpose as you scream and scream, louder than he thought you capable. You look into the eyes of your mother, the police, the school counselor and collapse readily, writing the story out time and time again, explaining why you cannot get out of bed. Your eyes refocus; there is no passive staring any longer. Rage climbs past your organs and into your throat, tears past a year of lies and trauma. You are finished keeping this monster’s secrets for him. You are so tired of burying your bones, of cleaning up your blood, feigning polite disinterest when he caresses someone who was supposed to be yours.

You still wake up scared he’s above you, a knife glistening in clever fingers. You still can’t be alone in the dark, and you can’t go into the neighborhood next to yours, where he sometimes would kiss you. It’s getting easier, though. You can walk behind boys without crossing the street. You can wear cherry lip gloss without wondering if that means you are asking for it.

You don’t remember where all the bruises were; you stop trying to make new ones. Before he raped you, he said “I am doing this because I love you” and for a long, long time you bought into his whispers. Now, though, you recognize the easy lie that rolled off of his tongue; loneliness is a clever thief. It turns rancid lies into reasons to stay. Your hair stopped falling out a few weeks ago; sometimes, that’s all you have left to measure growth by. Sometimes, that’s enough.

Megan is not here to construct your typical resilience manifesto, which typically requires some discarding of one’s past. She’s here to take your notions of justice and closure and stick them back up in the highest hotel room with the rest of those carnivores. In my work at the crisis center, survivors often tell me how useless sympathetic statements such as You’ll get through this or I know things will get better are to them. It often comes from people’s inability to cope with what has happened to someone important to them. It sets a certain pressure for survivors of trauma to be able to articulate what has happened in a comprehensible manner, when what has happened to them, and how their memory and body have been affected thereafter, is and should always be incomprehensible.

This is especially true when someone you love and trust has inflicted this incredible amount of trauma on you. “The R Word” isn’t trying to make sense of what has happened to the speaker, more make sure the reader understands and sees her where many who she trusted did not. Making sure the reader knows: if they react adversely to how the speaker might “measure growth,” then that says a hell of a lot more about them than it does her. Ask yourself, why do you want the speaker to seek closure? What would that even look like for you? Why would you ever want to make sense of someone being raped and physically abused by their partner?

While the speaker of this poem isn’t here to make her trauma palatable for you, she is distorting otherwise familiar images in a breathtaking way that invites us to expand our understanding of trauma and how it affects the world around us quite physically. She draws on images from the tarot: “You ignored the hooded skeleton in favor of the man wrapping his painted arms around a pastel girl, a hummingbird in his strong hands.” By drawing on a tool that one may use to reconcile the future or past, she dashes the victim-blaming notion that she should have seen this coming. She beautifully draws from images in childhood as well: “You hang plastic stars on your ceiling and count the ways the world could end. There aren’t enough.” It’s in these moments I am uncertain of whether to lean into my own shoulder or reach out for her. It’s in this feeling, suspended between confusion, disdain, and helplessness, that Megan wants you. For it is only in this feeling, and by allowing these same images around you to be distorted to fit hers, she has invited you to expand your own understanding. It’s truly a rarity to witness a piece so gorgeous in its intention as it is in its craft.

– Laura Rogalsky

Read Laura Rogalsky's RETURNING OR SOMETHING LIKE IT

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RETURNING OR SOMETHING LIKE IT

By Laura Rogalsky

Mornings I feel the bright orange in me

pressing against the slit of skin that connects our tongues

to the bottoms of our jaws, I wonder if it weighs as much as you

or why it weighs as much as both of us sometimes, or if it weighs more than honey and summer sounds

put together. And while I know how to count all the kindnesses that have left my body

and even how gravity works that there is no brightness paralleled to that of an emergency room,

I know that it can’t be the only reason I’m still pulled here and why everything

has been made to lean into each other in the most cruel, semiprecious way.

Read Megan Williams' The R Word

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The Future is Bulletproof

By Riley Turner, age 12

This is for the insignificant. This is for the creators, For the dreamers, For the believers. This is for the people who asked "what if?" This is for the people who asked "why not"? This is for every single person who wanted to make the world a better place

This is for the boy who was nice to everyone he saw yet still believed he was a nuisance because there was a voice in the back of his mind spitting poison into his thoughts This is for the girl who turns to song lyrics and alcohol because others won't accept who she really is. This is for the people who don't deserve half of the things life throws at them but still keep a smile on their face because they have the confidence that one day, it will get better.

This is for the people whose souls are much older than they are For the trampled flowers and crumpled papers and beautiful apples that no one picked because they were too hard to reach. This is for those beautiful people who never get to see it because their vision is clouded by their own self loathing

This is for the people who have died fighting for what they believe in This is for the people who have lived to tell the tale. This is for the people who have kept the faith Because, honestly, I've started to lose it

I used to think life was a dream, but it's turning into a nightmare. All I see around me are headlines filled with blood and gore and loss and sorrow But that's not the worst part of it The worst part Is thinking to myself "What could a twelve year old girl possible do about it?" Because I'm having to solve problems in algebra When I want to solve problems in Algeria And I know my future starts here In this very room While others' started in dark alleyways in the middle of a war I go to sleep to the sounds of crickets chirping and the soft humming of music in my ears While others drift away to the sounds of gunfire and angry yelling.

I'm not going to be there to hold that little boy's hand when he sees his father's head blown off while making explosives in the shed I'm not going to be there for the teenage girl who stumbled into a group of too friendly drunk men while walking down a poorly lit Manhattan street I'm not going to be there to provide a home to the countless youths who are disowned by the people they trust most for who they love or what gender they are I'm not going to be there to block the blows of every abusive spouse or parent who is one kick away from shattering their entire family I'm not going to be there because I'm not a superhero. I'm a twelve year old girl with frizzy hair and a short attention span. What could I possibly do to help them?

I realize that horrible things will happen whether I'm here to save people or not I realize that I'm not going to be there to wipe the tears of every broken soul. But that won't stop me from trying Because no matter how insignificant I am I will fight until the end

Tell the kids in Syria that their superhero is coming Tell the anorexic girls that I think they're beautiful Tell the depressed boys that I believe in them Tell the trans kids that I will do everything that I can for them to be who they really are Tell the artists and poets to keep inspiring and rising and bringing freedom to everyone who dares to pick up a paintbrush or a microphone

Scream it from the top of buildings Write it on the sidewalks Burn it into the sky

Fear it Embrace it Because if no one is going to say it I will

My name is Riley Turner And I am the future.

Our Feelings Extend Beyond Our Perception

Empathy is a matter of the body. Our empathy has the ability to defy geography and even physical boundaries, including the boundaries of gender. We are more than what we can see. In this sense, empathy can be a radical act. When we feel the pain of others we extend the borders of ourselves. We cut ourselves out of our skin.

In Riley Turner’s piece I see a young woman grappling with her simultaneous insignificance and rarity. She makes her own declarations, screamed from a megaphone. I am glad that somebody is screaming. To her cries I would add that our pain is important. The future is anything but bulletproof. It is actually ever so fragile -- fragile, I say, but not weak. Without pain we wouldn’t know where our bodies ended and the rest of the world began. And I would caution that we have to know who we are before we can embrace something that is outside ourselves. We have to know our stories before we can tell the stories of others.

There is no better place to begin writing about the world than with writing about yourself in it. But you have to be sure that you are actually writing about yourself in the world, not the world as it moves around you. Who are you, Riley? What are you blind to? What do you see?

And can you help us see ourselves?

– Caitlyn Luce Christensen

Read Caitlyn Luce Christensen's Well (An Excerpt)

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From Well (An Excerpt)

By Caitlyn Luce Christensen

When my father walks I can hear his flopping foot, the foot that betrays him over curbs and crumbling steps. The foot feels nothing, not even pain. This is little comfort. Pain protects the body from what would do it harm. Wrapped in its sheath of unfeeling, the foot makes my father vulnerable. What else might he lose? What else will change?

For now the foot is very much alive but because it lacks feeling it becomes a phantom, disassociated from the rest of his body. The foot, swelling and reddening by turn, is no longer a part of him. In its absence he stumbles.

The history that would explain this change – that would tell us where the feeling went when it left this part of my father’s body – is located in the spine, the center of all physical sensation. Each of the spine’s vertebrae is one island in an archipelago, linking sense to perception, unconscious to conscious. One world to another.

The cerebrospinal fluid is channeled through the cerebral aqueduct, the conduit bridging the brain’s territories of consciousness, sight, and sensation. The neurologists puncture my father’s spine with a thin, hollow needle and draw out a measure of the fluid, which they will use in an act of divination. They also inject a blue dye into the cerebrospinal fluid and map its course through his body.

Painted from precious water, this map is an image of sensation. Pain is the map’s compass rose, the topography, the ink.

The word for spine comes from espine, an Old French word that also meant thorn. These words are still used in English interchangeably. It is said that a spine from a rose stung Briar Rose to sleep. In some versions of the story it was not a thorn that pierced her but a spindle, the axis on a spinning wheel that revolves to form a thread.

When Briar Rose pricked her finger, the whole palace went to sleep along with her. This sleep lasted for a century and defied death. So when, after 100 years, a fortunate prince found his way through a forest of roses that softened and parted before him, he stepped into a castle yard where horses and spotted hounds slept in their kennels, where pigeons sat on the roof with their heads tucked under wings, where even the flies were still on the walls of the kitchen, and the cook held out her hand to seize the boy, and a maid sat by the black hen which she was about to pluck.

A thread – made from the spindle that turned it from flax – draws out the tales that sustain us. Schezerade gathered the fibers of her stories, incorporated one thread into another to spool out the tale that would save her. The spindle did not kill Briar Rose. Instead, she lived for more than a hundred years. Penelope wove a burial shroud, but undid a little every night as a way to stave off a future she did not ask for. Spinning, like stories, keeps us alive a little longer.

In fables, spinning also links this world to the next. In Mother Hulda, another Germanic fairy tale adapted by the Brothers Grimm, a spinner pricked her finger and dropped her bloody spindle in a well. When she leapt into the water after it, she emerged on the other side in another land. The water rose up in sacred pools that held the bodies of the unborn. Like the spinner’s thread, like the pain that comes when blood is drawn to – wells up on – the surface of a wound, stories push us through the boundaries of our bodies. They send us spinning. They draw us out.

Read Riley Turner's The Future is Bulletproof

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Reflections

By Sophie Pribus, age 13

Mirrors are liars.

A friend once told me that, and nothing is more true. Especially now, as I stare into mine, and try to find my face behind the fog. The clock ticks.

I reach to the left and grab at my hairbrush. My eyes drift and I catch sight of a million more outstretched arms.

I gaze at the first nearest to me. Fingers contact glass, but she turns from me and grabs the next girl. I am shunned.

I pull away, and the girl steps towards me. I trail my eyes down her hair to the wet spot on her nightgown, all the way to the ribbon at her waist. Vainly, she curtseys and fluffs her sleeves. Then shivers.

Peering further into the mirror, I barely catch sight of the next girl. She shyly holds her hands together in front of her stomach and leans against the sink. She hardly moves at all and I pass over her without another glance.

Next on the seemingly endless line of mirror panels, a girl pulls a brush through her hair. Shaking it out, she fingers it gently and, in one swift motion, pulls it on top of her head. Swirling it around in her fingers, and curls it into a ball and turns to see all the sides. Deciding it unworthy for dancing, she releases her fingers and the curls tumble down.

My eyes blur as I try to look further at the next girl; she is taking her contacts out. Left eye, right eye. Blinking hard several times, she gropes for her glasses and slides them on. She grabs her book and sits down on the floor.

Some time later I look farther into the glass and see another girl running her hands from her thin shoulders down to her narrow hips, modeling the body she most probably received from her mother.

I turn my head back to the front and stare hard into my reflection's eyes. They are chocolate, like my father's.

The girls are copying me. Why are they doing that? Who do they think they are?

No. Better question. Who do I think they are?

Who are they?

The mean one turns from me again. The shy cradles her arms and fears eye contact. Ballerina does a new bun again and again, but nothing is good enough for her. Mama's girl peers at her bust. Daddy's princess winks.

Is that me?

No, I tell myself. Mirrors are liars.

That can't be me. I am not vain. I am not shy. I am not unsatisfied. I am not my mother, or even my father.

I am me.

I look down. Fingers grab around my arm and I feel my physical self. Then I laugh at the girls in the mirror. They laugh back.

They're just reflections. Reflections of the world around me. They show what makes me up; my mother, my father, my dance world, the learning.

What's in a girl? Her reflections. Just tiny segments of her world, fighting to be most important.

That's what my mirror taught me.

But mirrors are liars.

In “Reflections” the writer grapples with the idea that her girlhood might be defined by the image she projects into the world rather than by the content of her character. She sees the many versions of herself in the mirror and recognizes that, separately, they don’t make up the entirety of her identity. What works so well about this piece is the immediate acceptance of its surreal setting – there’s no explanation for why there are so many versions of her in the mirror nor why they have their own personalities. The author gives enough room for the reader to make their own conclusions. The descriptions of the actions are the most compelling – when one girl shivers, or another winks, I feel most engaged as a reader because I’m curious about the symbolism but I’m not being led directly to the answer.

This piece beautifully articulates a process I’ve always associated with girlhood: looking at my reflection and trying to gauge or control how anyone might see me. Even though it’s still something I struggle with, I’ve overcome a lot of self-doubt and insecurity about what I see in the mirror because it never seemed to show what I want. I ultimately have to remind myself that an image, my image, will never truly live up to who I am as a person. “Reflections” is a remarkable indication of the author’s social awareness of this part of girlhood. She rejects a girlhood defined by dissecting herself in the mirror and understands that how she may be perceived as a young girl is not a reflection on her, but on the mirror (or person perceiving her). Her identity isn’t separated into discrete, static characteristics: it’s constantly created through their sublimation into her singular, wonderfully complicated self.

– Melissa Dias-Mandoly

Read Melissa Dias-Mandoly's The Mirror

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The Mirror

By Melissa Dias-Mandoly

could be anyone in the fog: body like a lighthouse light like a trap in woods

figure periphera: shadow-walking a line between legs broken open, blood running

we’re confetti-headed: enough to be singular like deer darting in a herd

like a mass of mosquitoes blotting the sky: each named and each known for what it consumes

like boxing mist into separate jars wall-mounted on display

reflection requires light first and surface, no dipping below algae toed and weightless

a bird flies straight into the window leaves its likeness in the glass leaves its likeness and leaves

Read Sophie Pribus's Reflections

[grlhoodpgh]

By Kalina Pierga, age 14

Girls are seen as many things— The weaker sex, Prizes, But mostly objects.

Seldom are girls asked About how they feel.

Most are insecure, Many are ashamed; Of their bodies, Of themselves, Of the fact that they are a girl.

—

In many countries, Being a girl Is not seen as something To be celebrated, But as a thing to be kept in the dark.

Hidden behind cloths, Behind closed doors, Behind the man they must have to escort them.

—

Girlhood is becoming harder and harder— Days of Target clothes And unpainted nails being enough Are long gone.

Societal standards are rising far beyond The horizon of rational belief That the telescopes we need to see them as normal Just keep growing.

—

No matter how many movements there are That promote unity among womankind, The structure of society Will always be combative to this concept.

Women are pitted against each other— Life becomes a competition to get the ideal world: Attain the husband, Attain the job, Attain success.

But there are only so many women that can make it. Not too many to overpower the male, But not so few that it appears to be Discrimination.

—

There is an unwritten rule book that weighs on Every woman. What to wear, What not to wear. How to act, How not to.

A dictation of a woman’s life determined Not particularly by man, But by society.

Rules for everything: Do not show emotion in the business place, Do not speak out of turn, Always apologize, Even though it may not be your fault.

These rules are part of why women and girls are viewed as lesser: The man is free to behave as he pleases, But the woman must restrain herself.

—

Girlhood is a funny thing— It is both a classroom And a burden.

A burden to have to wear what is deemed acceptable, Rather than what she pleases. A burden to have to face the sexist comments That are spat at her on a daily basis.

But it also is a teacher; To learn to overcome The adversity, The stereotypes, The generalizations, The discrimination A girl faces Is something a boy will never have.

Dear Kalina, Thank you so much for writing this poem and for sharing it with me and everyone else who will be reached by grlhood; it’s a very important poem to have been written. What I enjoy most about this poem is how it is a sequence. Forming the poem into many different sections allows your thinking to cover a lot of ground. It makes the poem feel like an accordion, like each section (separated by the smallest dash) has the potential to unravel even wider into a feminist song. Each section you’ve written has the ability to “accordion” even further in the reader’s mind, which is something I really appreciated. For example, in the second-to-last stanza of section 4, you begin to explore how: Women are pitted against each other— Life becomes a competition to get the ideal world: Attain the husband, Attain the job, Attain the success. I think this poem could’ve very easily ended this section right here—with this long list of “tasks” that women are expected to successfully complete. But your poem doesn’t stop there and pushes onward: But there are only so many women that can make it. Not too many to overpower the male, But not so few that it appears to be Discrimination. … shedding light on how deeply oppressive everything is. The fact that the poem does not hesitate here, that it continues onward to really “unpack” how problematic and complicated everything is, is really important. The form of the poem as a sequence really plays this up because each section can be meditated on and “unpacked” even further in the reader’s mind. Ending this particular section here before moving on to your next idea in a new section also gives the reader a little break to meditate on what was said. The last section of your poem also does a good job of “pushing forward” in talking about the complexity of girlhood. I like how you begin by describing girlhood as a burden, as something that is “spat on her on a daily basis.” Again, the poem could’ve easily ended here, but you continue to share: But it also is a teacher; To learn to overcome The adversity, The stereotypes, The generalizations, The discrimination A girl faces Is something a boy will never have. … opening the poem up into a wider, different perspective. I especially appreciate how you’ve isolated each thought into its own line (“the adversity,” “the stereotypes,” “the generalizations”) because it gives each part of the oppression its own weight. They feel so individually heavy. And then comes the whammy: “the discrimination/ a girl faces/ is something a boy will never have.” Because of the way you’ve created those line breaks in that last thought, we as readers are unable to see where you are going until it’s coming right around the corner and punching us right in the gut. Also, it makes the last thought so much more meaningful where girlhood as “something a boy will never have” can mean so many different things emotionally. Yes, boys do not have to face this discrimination. And yet, perhaps they can not grow in the same ways as girls either because of it… I’m really curious about your second section when you begin to talk about what girls have to face “in many countries.” I appreciate how your poem moves beyond the boundaries of the States to talk about girlhood worldwide. This is very important. It makes me wonder… does girlhood change from country to country depending on different things? How does it change? I like how this poem asks me to think about this. In the third section, I really like how you described how girlhood is becoming more difficult because “days of Target clothes/ and unpainted nails being enough/ are long gone.” The details here are very vivid and specific, and I appreciate this glimpse into your poet imagination. I think this is what’s so wonderful about poetry—poetry allows you to experiment and do all sorts of things with your choice of words. It makes me wonder, Kalina—what else can you come up with in future poems in terms of details? One last thing! Before this response gets even longer than it already is… You know how when you say a certain word many times, it begins to sound or look funny to you? A similar thing happened to me with the word “society” in your poem—it comes up again and again and after a while, I began to really think about it: what does it mean when we say “society”? What is society actually made up of? Are women seen as inside or outside of it, and how so? I’m not sure if I have my answers clear yet, but maybe you can join me in mulling this over too. Again, thank you for this poem, Kalina. It is a serious privilege to read it. Keep up the excellent, excellent work! All my best, Michelle

– Michelle Lin

Read Michelle Lin's "as if this mountain..."

[grlhoodpgh]

By Michelle Lin

as if this mountain bristles with honey and wax that we can sink into

as if molars can be mountains and mountains can gnash to the heart of it

as if our bodies can sink into an ice cube tray, but we never ask a mountain to melt or break

and if it does, we’d say what beauty and what grace—this mountain’s

moment preserved in a jar

-

or if this is the backyard memory of my mother, the molar, or the burial of my childhood dream:

mine was to grow evergreen and evergreen trees. murderous with life and inked with the only words

I have, because this was my nature, and my nature being the mountain of it

-

so here is the mountaintop and its corporate glass, all its busy moles and birds and inside of it,

his left foot is dead and I’ll know no other way to buy his love

beyond vaseline and pressured presses and the occasional sweating towel

so much of what I write about is death and vanity, the fear of my face too becoming fissure beyond the fact of age beyond

matching headstones, I want half of me to shrivel beside you

on the veranda the parts of us shrinking together limp and numb okay,

this is our money and our newfound luxury, and I will tell you now that there are no sapphires in my throat Nothing

to excavate here since when did my body get mistaken for a point of land the point is

I love you, but soon that becomes the leash around my last throat the point is as the sand shovels in and I am pressed

closer and closer to glass, my hands will be desperate on his swollen feet, my hands

will be busy spooning honey into his mouth I’ll learn to say oh how pretty this glass oh how pretty

-

inside my throat is no mountain

no tunnel will be built through it

no god ever cut out a mountain

destroyed it, yes

brought it down to its knees, yes

cut it out, no

cut it out, never

Read Kalina Pierga's "Girls are seen as many things..."

[grlhoodpgh]

And/Or

By Rebecca Oakley Hsiung, age 17

If you asked me, I would tell you that I am a young woman. The label “girl” doesn’t sit comfortably on my skin anymore, but at 17, I feel too young, inexperienced, and quiet to deserve womanhood without a qualifier. Would a full-fledged, undeniable, grown up woman have been afraid to buy that red strapless jumpsuit? Would a full-fledged, undeniable, grown up woman have been afraid to share that post on Facebook for fear of what others would think? I was and still am afraid of those things. Panic still flutters in my stomach when I have to talk to a man I don’t know or when a car drives by me at night. I may have gained bravery inside the walls of my school and in the company of my all-star friends (future businesswomen, linguists, professors, nutritionists, chemists, musicians, psychiatrists) and teachers (who want me to speak with conviction and say my truths), but take me outside and I lose much of my voice. Would a real woman act like that?

There is no answer to that, because there is no such thing as a “real” woman, or rather, all women are real. I hope you and I both know that by now.

Why have I spent so long confused about this point? Why, when I have always valued powerful women? Why, when I named myself “Woman Force” at the age of three? I have always idealized women who make use of their voices. I devoured children’s biographies of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Abigail Adams, Eleanor Roosevelt, Harriet Tubman, Sacagawea, and Elizabeth Blackwell at the age of eight. I share a soul with my aunts and my mom. All but one of my adored cousins are women. Most of my favorite and much-beloved teachers are women. Examples of strength in female bodies surround me all the time, and I am profoundly thankful for that. But because I admire their strength so much, it is difficult for me to remember that Eleanor Roosevelt was bullied, that my teachers talk about being self-conscious too, that some of my friends struggle to speak up as much as I do.

In my mind, one of the most challenging aspects of being a girl or woman in today’s world is remembering that we are not one-dimensional. It is a struggle, in the bombardment of edited images and projections of twenty-first century women, to remember that each person is a galaxy of multitudes and contradictions. I can be fearless on Tuesday morning and petrified Tuesday night. I can love my hair one day and want to straighten it the next. My gender can help define my perspective and deepest convictions without always defining me. Being female can be the most important and the least important thing about me.

It’s taken me a while, but I’m trying to embrace the freedom that this realization brings. I recommend it. Read “Planetarium” by Adrienne Rich and “The Type” by Sarah Kay to remind yourself of its truths and possibilities. Choose to embrace imperfection while acknowledging the perfection of what we think and create. Wear red strapless jumpsuits, sweatpants, bikinis, or turtlenecks if you want to.

Wear jumpsuits, sweatpants, bikinis, and turtlenecks if you want to.

Rebecca speaks of not knowing if she can use “woman” yet without a qualifier. But honestly— girl, woman, young woman – whatever she chooses for herself, it is true and it is spectacular.

To the young woman who is already reading Adrienne Rich at seventeen: you are astonishingly wise. You speak with such fierce tenderness about the girls and women in your life. Your words are a tightly packaged gift of comfort and confrontation. I wish I had been this brave as a teenager, this enlightened. As a teen, I rejected femininity with disdain, because I too was afraid, but perhaps in a different way. These days I spend a lot of my time defending girlhood – specifically the ostentatious, quiet, feral, timid, shallow, deep, intelligent, emotional, vicious, soft, and sparkling loveliness that is teen-girlhood. In Rebecca, I have a fellow fighter. Her writing strikes out against the messages that seek to dampen and constrict that loveliness. It is necessary and difficult work. I can’t wait to see what she writes next.

– Emily Hopkins

Read Emily Hopkins's I Take The She-Monster Into My Mouth and Hold Her Tenderly

[grlhoodpgh]

I Take The She-Monster Into My Mouth and Hold Her Tenderly

By Emily Hopkins

I wanted to write a sentence about being a girl— more volatile than that which contains it, and I wanted to think of becoming a kind of skin for the street. // Irreducible.

           It still ended up with the body— it’s limitations, the scruff of the neck.

A girl-monster might be my child. I could make a home for her against the folds of my belly, whisper instructions: this is how to feed without being caught.

SHE WAS A CHILD IN HER BIRDGRIEF. THE BIRD IN HER CHILD-REFT-GRAVE-CRY HOWLING AND CURSING.

She confuses the hell out of me, and I think that’s why I love her so much.

I just want. Want and want.

AUTOEROTIC AND AUTOBEGUILED.

Grief eases me into a space I don’t understand. Affect and all its swirling: I am still deeply connected to the body. I wonder if “girl” is the space of hybridity – to be nebulous and difficult, to engender bodily response. Maybe that, too, is because such a response is an unexplainable thing before it is shuffled into recognizable emotion.

When I got home and had time to look I found the instructions in the first box. I looked inside.

My mother taught me how to search my breast for cancer, how to avoid, when to go quiet, how to protect my vulnerably girl-body.

Quiet is a girl I knew well.

YOU TAKE AN OPEN WOUND INTO YOUR HOUSE AND YOUR LIFE. SPIT HER OUT.

Because it isn’t a matter of the vivid image, but of the gap between the words and the sight of the thing. Even here I feel like I’m not getting at it quite right. End with the body and the slippery touch of it. Put it in the ground and call the gap between dirt and skin reverb.

The body is best when is provides something to hold.

now I’m all riled up. I do it too often, right?

Translation is stretched to its limit.

WORLD IS MADE OF BODIES, SOME THINK FORCES. WE   ALL    THINK               YOU’RE       A       GRAND              GIRL.

I wanted to emulate stretching, the translation of it. Combination of discourse and absurdity— might be a bridge to the animal place, where one wants to be in control and out of control at the same time.

HACKS HER DOWN, MOWS HER DOWN ALL THE TALL MAD MOUNTAINS OF HER MIND.

I just want to talk and be friends and bite softly.

The “monster” and tenderness toward repulsion: the girl, and I-girl, and all the girls. We try to let ourselves expand out of original impulse, not to weave in and out of legibility.

           Ledger-face, tenderness writ clearly and large.

YOU’RE LATE TO LEARN WHAT’S WHAT, AREN’T YOU?

Am I too referential or high-pitched? Am I just beginning to climb out of the box?

I finally got home… I looked inside. I touched and looked for the gentle brutality

I’m still working on it.

YOU LIKE NOUNS. HERE’S SOME:

Girl.    Scruff.        Red.

I like illegible creatures // unknowable women. Here’s some: it’s difficult. The best kind identify with the monster.

They have to let you have time to do that.

* All-caps portions are borrowed from Anne Carson’s Antigonick.

Read Rebecca Oakley Hsiung's And/Or

[grlhoodpgh]

Blossom

By Kira Lugo, age 17

Newfound divinity Implanted the fetus Nurtured in unison Germinate femininity

Long princess gown Stretches down bruised little limbs Silk strands engrave history Lustrous flowers overcast by him

Roots flooded by the TV screen Pretty girls sure were vain Their fatuous scripts Echo in the adolescent brain

Years plagued by standing out Shallow talk, immersed lip gloss Sadness stemmed from wanting more Plain beauty lives without cause

Send a razor up hills of flesh An open field for his hand to caress Fake nails brimmed some swinging fists Most fights were over a guy that they missed

Living for others leaves a vacant soul Despite nice clothes and keeping groomed Until discerning a potential beyond Then did I fully bloom

“To lead us to an overwhelming question.” That, you may have recognized, is a phrase from the T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” both a bane and ablessing of many an AP English or college Intro to Poetry course.

The other day, at school, we listened as some undergraduates gave us a “practice run” of a presentation that they are going to give next week at a conference on writing centers in Salt Lake City. We were supposed to give lots of criticism, so that they could make modifications and excel in what was, for most of them, their first conference presentation outside of a hothoused classroom situation. After the panel presentation by three young women, one of the audience members noted that many of their declarative statements had sounded like questions.

We hear about this a lot in the media: Girls state everything as a question, even things they’re certain of; boys state everything declaratively, even if they might secretly question what they’re saying. That’s somewhat reductive, and of course there are exceptions, and of course for many of us gender is more complex than a binary allows. The assumption in that reductive formulation, though, is that stating things provisionally, aka being open to revision or negation or doubt, is weakness, whereas pretending you are sure about something you are not sure about is—what? Strength?

Maybe we need to rethink not only the formulation, but also the way it is mostly used to say to women of all ages who might speak this way at times: Suck it up and sound more confident.

You know: Fake it till you make it. Make believe you’re brave. The Gospel of Confidence preaches this so loudly that, once it subsides and all that’s left is its swaggerly reverb in the ears, you might just barely hear its subtext. Lie. Hide your feelings. Don’t let others know you have questions. The more you doubt yourself, the more sure you should seem.

I won’t go over all of the instances in past history and current events where we can see this gospel and its subtext doing some serious damage to individuals, groups, the environment, people who have yet to walk the earth—Not when we have poetry that underscores the ways in which young women today are tugged back and forth by affirmation and limitation not just once in a while, but sometimes several times in the space of a single hour. “Blossom,” by Kira L., gives us six stanzas of unexpected juxtaposition, images of possible beauty snagged by sexism and trivialization, often-subtle end-rhymes—and observations turned, at their ends, into questions. We all must question the so-called realities fed to us by the TV screen or even our peers, but for girls questioning is even more important, as it means the difference between being tugged around and “truly blooming.”

The poem begins at the true beginning: the womb, where we are all, presumably, equal in our birthrights, our “divinity.” In that “unison,” certainly you might expect nature itself to “germinate femininity”. But nature is hardly a match for nurture. Even as the big ideals surround the birth of a girl, full of potential to bloom, there are three question marks in the first stanza alone.

The poem puts us on alert with these question marks, suggesting that to be a young woman in our culture is never without a wavering. The princess gown only covers the bruised limbs. Skin that should, first and foremost, be a girl’s home is objectified, turned into a field that may be caressed or cut. Don’t let the beautiful language, the rolling rhythm, or the snap-to of the rhymes fool you: the images of beauty that are sold to girls throws them into doubt about what truly matters and can rob them of their birthright of potential, their confidence, and most importantly, of their actual beauty, which can only be seen when one stops living for others and believing the questions phrased as facts. Unmasking these “facts” for what they are and turning them back into questions seems only right. The question marks tell me that wavering is not weakness but movement toward hard, but necessary, choices.

– Ellen McGrath Smith

Read Ellen McGrath Smith's Immersed Lip Gloss

[grlhoodpgh]

Immersed Lip Gloss

For Kira Lugo

By Ellen McGrath Smith

Sometimes we wore lip gloss so shiny it looked like candy apple. I think they even sold a lip gloss by that name.

Good thing we had no selfies then, except for actual, physical photo booth pics, always matte, black and white; otherwise, the shine of our lips would have thrown off the whole composition. If it weren’t for our eye shadow’s two midnight coves near the top of our heads, or the blush slicing into our cheeks, we would have been all lips.

“Your lips look like a chicken’s ***hole,” my grandma used to tell my mother when she tried to sneak out of the house with lipstick on too young.

Sometimes I’d look at an apple I’d bitten, alarmed at the teethmarks, the stain on the white from the red on my lips. Or I’d see a friend in profile, the arachnid legs of her eyelashes sheathed in mascara. We were never going to stop being animals, none of us.

Read Kira Lugo's Blossom

[grlhoodpgh]

Clumsy Adolescence

By Cicely Bradshaw, age 18

Clueless and naïve; Unknowingly glug puberty's hormone cocktail. Trapped in mother nature's maze, Enveloped by hormone’s haze As you clamber through adolescence. Stumbling, Bumbling, Fumbling, Through girlhood.

Skirts get shorter, tops tighter. You’ve outgrown your favourite cardigan   Made from flowers crowns, smiles and careless laughter. No longer wearing your heart on your sleeve; That cardigan is too torn, fraying and faded.

You sat at the side-lines,   Half-watching the world go by. Other girls caught your eye,   Like no guy ever could, Boys never interested you the way everyone told you they should. Team Edward or Jacob? Team Bella more like! Because Kristen Stewart was the only reason you watched Twilight.

“What is wrong with you!”   They sneer. In desperation you grew your hair Blinded my disgust and fear, In the hopes to find something   that was never there.

Effort and disappointment wore you down, It was all pointless. Still the black sheep of the flock, Sticking out like a sore thumb, Obviously something must be wrong with you. Something no amount of make-up can fix. One day you will hack off your hair, Stop weighting your worth on fitting in, And begin to grow into your own skin.

Welcomed into womanhood Through gates lined in crimson. Exclamations of “Congratulations!” dished out, Like last nights dinner; Overdone and cold. Their well-intended lessons in lady-likeness Shove shame down your throat, Lining your stomach, Making you feel queasy and helpless.

The media lies and waits Lured by young girls’ programmed shame Tempted by the allure of lack of self-worth. Whispering in immature ears; “beauty is the key to happiness.” Once ensnared, The media snaps up confidence And devours self-worth. Stripping girls of their independence and autonomy, Before appointing them to companies, Who drain their money And morph into part of their identity.

The old ideals bellowed, too close to home; "Women should be works of art." To be admired for their beauty, But not for their craftsmanship. To be seen but not heard. To be decoration; Hanging in the background, Providing lightness and comfort, Rarely catching one’s intellectual attention. To be dazzling, But not a distraction to others from the important things in life, Too complicated for a simple woman to understand.

Even those who have fought, Strived and struggled to have a voice, to pave down a future. Even the bravest and the fiercest, End up as art, Modern art; Highly regarded by some, Yet still valued at less than they deserve; Simplified, ridiculed, devalued, And disregarded. However, each warrior is a building block Which paves a way to the future. Thus we fight so our effort can be noticed, Yell so we can be heard, Learn so we can rally the troops. Then, with the building blocks we have formed, Toil away to create a staircase Which shall be climbed to gender equality.

Cicely Bradshaw’s “Clumsy Adolescence” is a defiant snarl, a call to arms. “‘Women should be works of art,’” she writes. They’re “to be admired for their beauty,/But not for their craftsmanship”; meant “to be dazzling,/But not a distraction to others from the important things in life,/Too complicated for a simple woman to understand.” The poem’s language is blunt and precise, and moments like these (“simple woman”) are so bitingly sarcastic that you can’t help but feel okay about this next generation. The girls of Cicely’s poem may start out “clueless and naïve,” but they’re nonetheless tough and capable.

Our girls are inheriting a flawed world. They’re keenly aware. The attention paid to female beauty is exhausting, no less for young women than their elders, and what less than rage will do? But if women should be works of art, then I want to say this: good art is challenging, disturbing, captivating, complicated. It does not have to be beautiful. If it is, its beauty is a tool and a weapon. These girls, simple women? No, somehow I don’t think they would ever settle for that.

– Nina Sabak

Read Nina Sabak's Anthem

[grlhoodpgh]

Anthem

By Nina Sabak

We learned beauty from the magazines. We learned beauty from our favorite shows. We learned beauty from our brothers’ pin-ups, from the billboards on the edge of town, from each other.

We learned the geometry of eyelashes: volume, length. We learned the difference between lip gloss, lip stain, and lipstick. We learned contour and highlight. We learned to maximize.

We were girls or women or neither or both. We were the princess and the monster in the same skin. We showed our claws and bared our teeth and we were wild, wild, wild.

We learned that prettiness was a weapon, and we intended to be the ones wielding it. Our nails were ragged or perfect, our hair shorn short or worn long, our jeans ripped at the knees. We were careful and careless. We spat out blood or shivered at the sight of it, used the wrong fork, said the right thing. We looked at boys and we looked at girls. Their eyes on us were a camera we couldn’t shake.

There was something off about us. There was something strange in our bones. We were too big and too small, too quiet and too loud. We didn’t love right, talk right, think right. We could always have been prettier. Someone told us you can never be too rich or too thin, and why wouldn’t we believe it?

We were girls even when we weren’t girl enough. We were girls even when we were too girl to be respected. We named ourselves that.

We learned beauty from its absence; we learned beauty from ourselves. We learned the temperature of our wrists, the skin under our scabs, we learned the weight of hair, we learned how bodies move. We knew how an ache moved through us. We learned what we could ache for.

We were hungry. We were tired. We hid our scratches under our sleeves, hoped they’d fade, and they didn’t. We blurred the boundary between the wounded and the wound itself. Our pain was not beautiful, and so what. Our scars were not symmetrical, and so what. This was our rallying cry: so what, so what, so what.

We kissed pillows and mirrors and photographs. We kissed boys and each other. We kissed in the dark, on the sidewalk, before the movie, after our parents were asleep. We kissed under the stairs. We kissed up on the roof and inside the bellies of cars we would eventually forget the make of.

We knew this: that we were alive, somehow, and doing the best we could.

We did not know this: that someday we would miss the girls we had been. Someday, there would be warnings we’d long to pass back through the muddied years. We would want to spare ourselves so much. We would look at our own faces in photographs and decide whether or not they were beautiful.

Oh, that old sorrow. Oh, the marks we would still bear. In the future, we would be other people. But here we were, still girls, still learning what we could carry. Teach me, we said. Teach me that.

Read Cicely Bradshaw's Clumsy Adolescence