Honey I shrunk the women
I shrunk the confidence
I shrunk the spirit
I shrunk the waist size
I slink away with my gains
Things I gained from the physical and spiritual loss of our women
with each plate a terror
each bite a struggle
And each drink a small respite from the hell that is consumption
More than 50% of our society feeling afraid at the table
Do not dare to eat anything bigger than your fist
Your stomach will not hold it
You’ve trained it to hate food as much as you do
As we enter the throws of adolescence
And our ******* grow
and our thighs swell
Filling the space around us with anatomical care
It appears as though our body is trying to hide parts of itself
Covering up the sharp edges
So we don’t cut ourselves
But that doesn’t stop us
We struggle for decades, Years
Because though a minute on the lips
Is forever on the hips
These negative body images we teach girls to strive for
Last longer than forever
and are much worse than a bite of food
abstaining from the simple sensory joy
that comes with a piece of chocolate
Or a plate of fettuccini
simply because if you did
“No one would want to see me”
But when I look at a plate of food
I do not see a challenge
I am lucky
I see potatoes stuffed with a healthy body image
Noodles topped with good self esteem
And broccoli steamed in my confidence
I am a minority
Because when most girls look at a plate of food
Even subconsciously they see
Salad with a dressing made of clothes that don’t fit
chicken with ******* that are much too large
And Macaroni n’ oh please Let my stretch marks disappear
Before I have to go to the pool
I feel an ache in my chest
But my pain derived from empathy
Is nothing
Nothing
Compared to the aching stomachs, sunken eyes
and sharp cheekbones
Of the victims of our worlds view of women
We are taught to be
Curvy, But not fat
Skinny, But not anorexic
Entertaining, but not over-emotional
unattainably perfect, but not fake
and our whole world is becoming one big contradiction
One plate of food
One advertisement
one beauty product
One girl
At a time
And we can try to place blame
We do try to place blame
We try to blame men
Or the government
Or the media
Because in the end they all had a part to play
But this took centuries of existing in our society
Millennia of festering patriarchy
Largely male dominated history
The dehumanization of the female
Springing from the hyper-sexualization of her body
The largely stigmatized natural functions of the menstrual cycle
The somehow simultaneously glorified and yet also disgusting ******
The lack of female leaders in our world because they will either be painted as a *****
Over emotional
Hormonal
Distractingly attractive
Or not **** enough to be in the public eye
And the process of women shrinking to allow men more room to grow