To All The Girls After Me | Teen Ink

To All The Girls After Me

January 21, 2016
By simplyinferior GOLD, Ottawa, Illinois
simplyinferior GOLD, Ottawa, Illinois
15 articles 0 photos 23 comments

Growing up is like being thrusted into a blackhole
You’re blinded from everything except the fact you are plummeting
into a fathomless nothing with no parachute to break the impact
Think that’s a bit dramatic?
My bad, it must be the PMS
You don’t experience that yet, but most people use it as an excuse
for when us girls feel anything but happy
Speaking of happy, there are many things that can make us happy
in this stage of entering adolescents
like spending hours caking on masks to our faces
or getting burning blisters from heated metal rods
that makes our hair smell like ashtrays
Why do we do these great, fun things?
Well, it’s certainly not for our own personal satisfaction
but to impress boys who will show us off as their trophies
before tossing us out like last week’s leftovers
But, wait. There’s more!
We also learn to become very good at math
not to actually get jobs in the field, of course
but instead to count every contrite calorie
We allow our begging bodies to use
until our boney ribs protrude
and we are labeled as sick,
maybe from the start
only being raised to be torn apart
I tell this to all the girls that may come after me
So you can fight to be stronger
than what us women were forced to be
 


The author's comments:

I was inspired to write this when I began to think about the two little girls I babysit. I have come very close to them and can't help but imagine what their teen years will be like. I want nothing more than for them not to go through what I and a lot of other girls have gone through. 


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This article has 1 comment.


on Feb. 8 2016 at 2:59 pm
writer-violist DIAMOND, Jenks, Oklahoma
63 articles 4 photos 84 comments

Favorite Quote:
“There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.”
― Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

Wow. Just wow. This poem is absolutely stunning and a great piece of work. I am sorry you had to go through this and I hope the two little girls you babysit won't. God bless! I like how in your poem you use strong and powerful words such as thrusted, fathomless, and caking. I can see how this relates to society, for them to see girls as super skinny supermodels when really almost no one looks like that. You are really expressing your feelings in this piece. The imagery in your poem is a very nice touch, I could just picture someone's head as they are curling their hair. Thank you for writing this, it's amazing. Please keep writing, I'd like to see more, and God bless! :)