I audition for the role of Ophelia.
Ophelia might be 18. She might be 25. We don’t know. We know she’s young and pretty. I’m 27 and fairly pretty. I’m not young.
The director says he won’t cast someone who “looks” older than 25. I know this means he won’t cast someone who looks older than he thinks 25-year-olds look like.
The truth is, your face when you’re 27 is the same face as when you’re 25. The truth is, your face when you’re 25 is usually the same as when you’re 23. It changes sometime in the night when you’re 21.
Your face when you’re 20 is your face when you’re 18 is usually very close to your face when you’re 16. But when you audition for a 16-year-old when you’re 16, you lose the role to someone who’s 25.
You realize that all of those teenagers you watched in movies growing up were adults. They needed to be beautiful. They needed to be desired. Not awkward, growing, acne, baby fat cheeks.
That’s why you never looked like them. You wanted so badly to look like them.
Now 27 is too old for 25 and you spent your life waiting to look old enough to look young until you’re too old to look your age.
I lie. He can’t tell whether I’m 23-25-27 or whatever age at which a woman is disqualified.
I get the role. I meet the actor playing Hamlet. He’s 45. I meet the actress playing Hamlet’s mother, and she’s 30.
God forbid a woman looks like she was born before she gave birth.
Imagine if she looked like a mother.
Would Ophelia like to be a mother?
Would she have to look like one? With stretch marks and tired eyes from late nights nursing her baby?
Would she have to grow up?
Luckily for Ophelia, she drowns before she gets the chance.
Luckily for me, I still look young enough for the audience to care.
Ophelia and I leave behind a perfect corpse. And happily, because who leaves flowers at a grave with crows feet and smiles lines?
The play is a tragedy, so we don’t smile much, anyway. Luckily.
The people will cry because I’m worthy enough to die,
and happy Ophelia will never become too old to play herself.
Ophelia— a somewhat lazy poem I recently found buried in my notes app.
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