that first conversation we had
sitting on those steps, you said
girls like us would never feel ok
around girls like them
because although the Italian masters
would have died for us, they
glow with the modern gifts nature's given them:
that smooth skin, those skinny hips.
and though we know our curves
are what keep the world turning and strong,
those low-maintenance, able-to-be-braless,
everything-fits girls drive us mad.
we can be as beautiful, as talented as we want,
and we won't feel like their equals.
no matter how sad we are, no matter
how dramatic or self-centered, we will never
be the indie rom com leads. we will never
see a reflection of ourselves, because we
just don't fit the stupid standard.
we will never effortlessly
possess ourselves they way they do,
we will never hold the air of mystery
girls like them have been handed.
the girls and boys we are drawn to, fatally
invested in, we are convinced that they
will never think of us as cool
in the same way girls like them are cool. we can
say and do whatever we can,
but at the end of the day, we are too real,
too honest, too emotional, too grounded.
we are the friend and never the lover,
the sidekick but never the wife. films
lie: the girl with a zit gets her dream boy! but
only after becoming like them.
never girls like us. only girls like them.
I can't believe I believed that it was ever
their fault.
girls like them, girls with long hair
and ribcages you can see, girls
with gaps between their thighs
that you can measure, girls
who haven't done anything
for their beautiful - those girls
and we girls and girls beyond
and in between, we're all lied to,
we're all forced constantly,
impossibly into boxes,
paraphrased by catcalls, diminished
into the nothingness that is the word
"baby" shouted at you by a stranger
across the street at 2PM when you're
just walking home from class.
and it doesn't matter what you look like,
doesn't matter how short you cut your hair,
how many tattoos you get
just trying to reclaim your own skin,
there will always be a man
that thinks, however briefly, that
you belong to him.
who gives a **** about girls like them
being better than girls like us,
or girls like you, or girls who were once men?
at the end of the day, we all have it worse,
and you can be bitter, or you can understand
that the "us" and "them" is a lie,
invented to distract so that
we'll fight each other, tooth and nail,
for the sake of men.
there are no girls like them.