She had a waist so small he could cup his hands completely around it
This book I read as a young girl
The characters were ooing and ahing about this tiny waisted girl
How pretty she was and how amazing
I remember taking my hands
And trying to reach them around
And they never did reach
I wanted to be a boy, I wanted to play football, and walk around with no shirt
I wanted everyone to think I was a boy
Every boy I read about
Every boy I saw on tv
I mimicked
Boys didn’t get touched
Boys could be safe
So maybe if I acted enough like a boy
I could make it all stop
All the girls my age, there shirts didn’t seem to fit as tight as mine did
My dad said I looked like a ****
My shirts being so tight
My face was red
I didn’t know what I had done
I was just a kid, mom had bought me these clothes
But I had outgrown them they said
I never wore tight clothes again
I wore my clothes baggy
So people couldn’t see me
So they didn’t know how I was framed
We were at a park with some friends one summer day
We were swimming in a creek
I was walking with my mom back to the car
And I heard the cute boys swimming up the way
Say to each other “is that thing a boy or a girl?”
I wanted to cry
I just ran after my mom faster and tried to keep it in
These are the things that make life difficult for women
The things men as understanding and kind as they can be can still never understand
The things that we can’t always put in words
The things we all feel
But rarely have the courage to say
These are the things we as women need to learn how to express so that we may move on and create a new world for little girls
Because until we learn how these problems in us started, we can not learn how to end them.