They all looked the same. Every girl walking through the hallway looked the same. Each one’s hair was highlighted and dyed, styled into an unnatural perfection. Their make-up glittered, shone and dazzled. Their teeth were flawlessly white, and their blackened, mascara-encased eyes sparkled with empty stares. Delicate, statement jewelry sat gingerly around their necks, and wrists, dangling from their ears. Their bodies were un-healthily thin, and curved to an unreal perfection. They all wore tight, skimpy clothing that hung flawlessly off their hips, and clung to just the right places on their small torso’s. Thousands of envious, greedy stares covered their bodies, like black flies covering dead meat. They grew numb, to the individualities that made each of them human. They became dolls, all persistently competing, meaninglessly pursuing perfection. It was futile.


Then, down the street came a chubbier girl. She was short. She had cankles. Tiny ears, large feet, muscular calves, thighs and upper arms. She had hips so small you couldn’t tell where the stomach ended and the hips began. Her hair was un-tamed, wavy, thick, and frizzy. It surrounded her face, sat on her head like a helmet. Here eyebrows were thick, and her face beneath them delicate. She wore mens red sneakers, baggy cargo pants that were too long for her short, stubby legs, and a tight blue T-shirt exposed her manly arms. The socks she wore, hidden underneath her pants and sneakers were light blue, with little santa-clause’s on them. She wore a pink wrist-band that said “be yourself” on it, and her hair was pulled back from her face into a high pony tail, like she always had it. It annoyed her when her un-tame-able hair got in her face. She wore her grandmothers old, big, and rusty necklace, and the neon watermelon earrings her mother and her got at a craft fair once. A purple scarf wrapped tightly around her beefy neck, and she carried a pen in her back pocket. She was a jumbled mixture of everything that made her... her. Every cocoon she had broken from, every skin she had shed, everyone and everything that had molded her, and was still today a part of her. She was unique, special, a complete individual.


The dolls made fun of her. But secretly, jealously burned behind their empty stares. They were jealous, of her freedom, to be herself completely, her freedom from the competition they were all stagnating in. And this made them angrier. They pushed her down to the ground on the sidewalk, and the mocked her relentlessly. They made her feel guilty, for being herself, they made her feel terrible, and confused. She began to believe, that she didn’t belong. She cried. She felt like an abomination. She felt as if being her misfit self, was a sin. Reluctantly, at first she began to suck up to the dolls. Changing her style in little ways, until she was utterly un-noticeable, un-distinguishable form the other confused dolls. She and the other dolls tried frantically, strove desperately and endlessly to become more uniform, perfect, “better.” They were always changing, always in competition, always uncertain, and soon, the girl with the cankles, who was now just like the rest of them, every girl, forgot who they were. They were all lost, they were all secretly, in their own hearts, a misfit. And every day, more and more girls begin to forget who they are, they’re lost in, drown in this thick plastic ocean. Who are you? When you walk down a street, does everyone look similar? Do you see hoards of people, all dressed the same... Are you one of them? Have you ever looked at someone else’s outfit and felt, inadequate? Don’t lose yourself, ever. You’re uniqueness is not a plague, it’s a blessing. Don't ever forget that, whoever you are, and don't ever let anyone take it from you.