When I was young, just starting to understand the world
I learnt to dislike features of my body
I wanted to be a particular height
Not too long, not too short either
Just exactly like the image
Of the princesses
I yearned for an hourglass body image
I wanted my eyes to be blue
My skin colour fair
That's the shade I had coloured all the pretty barbie girls in
In all my colouring books since kindergarten
Of course, that was my definition of beautiful
I learned wanting to be soft-spoken
Even when my mind revolted
I was bustling with so many ideas
How could I learn to subside the storms in my soul?
But you see, I was taught to be a 'good' girl
And 'good' girls didn't answer back
They didn't raise their voices
'Good' girls tolerated, they kept quiet
They suffered so they could keep their societies together
They sacrificed their careers, everything they stood up for
When it was time for marriage
My society idealized obedience and conformity
I grew up not wanting to be happy or ambitious or successful
Instead, my teenage was a lot about being the perfect ideal of beauty
Looking down upon girls who were comfortable with sexuality
It took education, awareness, unlearning, years of it
To dismantle it bit by bit
To consciously unlearn the misogyny I had internalised
Before I could even begin to appreciate the idea
Of loving myself
I learnt that bodies are different
To decide that I won't let
The hourglass image become my truth
That I could be successful and ambitious
And not feel guilty for it
It took time to be comfortable in my skin
To love the brown on my hands and legs
To be comfortable with hair on my body
To unlearn the need to wax
Whenever I wanted to wear shorts
To be comfortable in wearing a swimsuit
To unlearn that how I dressed
Was a label on how I wanted to be looked at
To take a stand
To speak up
To be a feminist not just in my head
But especially in settings where casual misogyny
Was normalised
To call out sexism in my circles
To stand for what I believed in
It took time, a lot of it
And I'm still unlearning at 20
So I share this story today
With every young girl out there
Who will be told that her bust needs to be a particular size
Her skin a shade fairer
Who'll be given a label meter
To judge her skin colour
I say this to you
When they attempt to give you the rulebook
The Dos and Don'ts on how to feel about your body
I hope you chuck it in the bin
And I hope you let no one tell you
Who you can and cannot be
It's a big wide world out there
And it's all yours to be
I hope amidst all this noise
That gets louder every day
You still listen to your voice
That tells you, it loves you
And roots for you, throughout the way.
