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