Imperfectly Perfect

Imperfectly Perfect

I see her everywhere I go
She’s everything I wish to hold
The things I want myself to be
She lives what I can only dream

Her beauty stops him in his tracks
Makes him turn and look on back
The world falls easily to her feet
Charming smile to all she meets

Flawless creature walking earth
Yet unaware of what she’s worth
She doesn’t see how the other girls stare
Wishing they could be so fair

How undying is her grace
How faultlessly she knows her place
I wish I knew the things she sees
I wish I felt that perfectly

But what’s that sadness in her eyes?
What are the secrets that she hides?
The things she thinks when she’s alone
The things she’s done she can’t condone

She cries at night and doesn’t know why
Feels just enough to get on by
She’s sees nothing but imperfection
Staring back in her reflection

Others wish for her mirror face
Others want for her lovely grace
But she sees nothing but the scars
Etched into her soul too far

They won’t ever know the tears she cries
How everyday she lives a lie
For every morning as she awakes
She reaches for that perfect face.

© Lily K. Lynn 2012

Skin Deep

Skin Deep

Her fingernails dig into her skin
She runs them down her face
Cursing the flaws in her reflection

She wants smooth, unblemished
Like those other girls she sees
Carrying the world on their palms

But she will never be those girls
She is tainted, damaged, flawed
The world swallows her instead

So she makes scars for herself
Staining her flaws with blood
In hopes they will disappear

She punishes her body
For not being perfect
She slowly self-destructs

She only makes it worse
But she doesn’t care
She will achieve perfect through pain

She is hollow, drowning
Red rivers stream down her cheeks
Bloody surrender to dangerous desires

It’s not enough, it will never be enough
Not until she is perfect
She must be perfect, perfect, perfect

Screams echo inside her head
She curses another day of her failure
Another day of imperfection

The world isn’t kind to imperfection
It shows weakness, a lack of will power
She will not be that, she refuses to

That line between
Perfection and obsession
Blurs and disintegrates

Soon she will be nothing but ash
Crumbled and burnt out
What is “beautiful” anymore?

But it doesn’t matter
Because she will be perfect
Even if it kills her.

© Lily K. Lynn 2011

Thin

I had actually planned to post another poem today (which coincidentally somewhat links to this subject too), but I happened upon one of my blogger friend’s poems yesterday and it inspired me to write this one. You can read her poem here. It’s titled “The Mirror Lies” and the author is willowdot21.

Self-image is something everybody struggles with, some more than others. We are a society that preaches “curves are beautiful”, yet girls are still starving themselves to near death to be skinny like the supermodels we see walking down the catwalk, and the actresses we see plastered on our magazine covers. I’m not here to preach to you about the dangers of eating disorders, though. What’s scary to me is that most girls know exactly what it is, but they fall into that destructive pattern anyway. I’m not denying I’ve had similar thoughts. I know I should embrace curves, but I still want to be skinny because that’s what society tells us women need to be. All over the media and entertainment industry, it’s there. These pretty, skinny girls get the guys and they get ahead because they’re beautiful. Sadly, this also subconsciously seems to tell men that the “ideal woman” they should be chasing after are the supermodel types. So girls strive to be that. It’s a vicious, scary cycle.

Any girl who’s struggling and happens upon this post, please remember you’re beautiful. I know you likely hear it too much and you don’t believe it, but we are all beautiful, whether we are skinny, curvy or in between. So take care of yourself and respect your body. Aim for good health, not skinny. You are deserving of a place in this world as much as the next person. Xx

Thin

You’re fifteen and flawless
Got the world at your feet
A smile that enraptures
Everybody you meet

Then one day you decided
It wasn’t enough
You needed skinny
To feel wanted and loved

Your friends are so beautiful
But your jeans are too tight
So you decide to stop eating
To feel weightless and light

The scale becomes obsession
And the first day you fast
You never suspected
How long it would last

But the weight comes off
And you feel free
But it’s just the beginning
Of how trapped you will be

Addiction becomes habit
And now you can’t stop
People start noticing
As the weight comes off

You want them to notice
How you’re becoming so small
At the same time hoping
They won’t notice at all

Your mother cries
With tears down her face
Eat something, anything
But you continue to waste

You know it’s too late
To pull back now
You just wanted to fit in
You didn’t care how

So now you’re in bed
You’re too weak to move
Being fed against your will
With food down a tube

Everyone asks why
You threw your life down the bin
And all you can say is
“I just wanted to be thin.”

© Lily K. Lynn 2011

Beautiful Girl

In a previous post, I wrote about that “perfect girl” we all sometimes wish we could be. It’s nice to be admired for being pretty and beautiful, but the reality is that we have no idea what goes on behind these projections of perfection. This piece is not so much about what the perfect girl may feel, but it’s a piece about being judged from the outside. We all know the saying “don’t judge a book by its cover”, but inevitably, we still do. It’s part of human nature to be attracted to beautiful things and it’s part of human nature to judge what we see. The boy with glasses must be a geek, the skinny girl must have an eating disorder, the quiet girl who keeps to herself must be stuck-up, the gorgeous girl wearing a mini skirt must be easy, that freakishly good-looking guy must be stupid because God doesn’t give with both hands etc etc. These judgements can’t be changed. I do it, you do it, even if we deny doing it. We can’t help it. We inflict judgement on others, and they do the same to us.

Goodness knows I’ve had my fair share, and as I grow and learn more about myself, I realise that not everyone will think like me and the way I project myself on a subconscious level tends to push people away. I’ve always been that quiet, reserved girl, and I’ve paid for it. I’ve tried drama classes, acting classes, and while I enjoyed them immensely and met amazing people, the only thing I can credit it to is giving me a bigger mask to hide under. I’ve learnt fairly well how to mask my social awkwardness, though I still have a long way to go. I have to remind myself every time I meet someone “remember to smile” “remember to ask them questions about their life, even if they are meaningless, because small talk is important” (FYI I’ve always been a “deep conversations” kind of girl). Maybe this is part of having the INFJ personality type – I don’t know – but this is how I must function. If I don’t do these things, I get seen as stuck-up and a party pooper and aloof. I hate this, because it’s not who I am at all. Sometimes, I think I see the world quite differently to other people and people don’t think about things the same way I do. It’s the only way I can seem to explain all this. During my exchange in Toronto in 2009, a classmate of mine said something to me that really just hit home. One late afternoon, while we were working on our documentary with the rest of our group, she just turned to me and said “you know, you’re actually a really nice person”. And that, my friends, is the story of my life.

This piece, however, focuses on the beautiful girl and the judgement she receives from the outer world. We know that we get judged for our weaker points, which is why I wrote this focusing on something most people would consider a good quality to have – beauty. How easy is it, really, to be beautiful? I don’t think this poem covers even half of that loaded question. Xx

Beautiful Girl

She looks into the mirror
And struggles hard to find
A picture beyond what’s painted there
The person she is inside

They always call her beautiful
The boys, they look and stare
She gets what she wants with the wink of an eye
But inside she feels so bare

Her eyes are really pretty
An angel walking on earth
She’s okay with being beautiful yesterday
Today she questions her worth

She asks if that’s what everyone sees
The picture painted outside
She gets what she wants ‘cause she’s beautiful
Her looks she cannot hide

She wants to be extraordinary
To charm with what’s in her heart
But they don’t listen to what she says
They don’t want any part

So her words they go unheard of
She learns to not say a thing
The pretty girl sitting in the back
Becomes all that she is

She looks into the mirror
And slowly dies inside
They all call beauty a blessing
But they never mention the price.

© Lily K. Lynn 2011

Un-Pretty Me

I often wonder what has made me into the person that I am. I think if we reflect on our lives, the little moments likely string together to create who we become in the present. The tiniest moment can change us forever. We might not even realise it at the time. This piece was written during one such moment of reflection. I think all girls feel like the plain girl every now and then, even the supermodels. We have our good days and bad days. I think it was in high school that I really started to become aware of the way I looked to others. My sense of style kicked in around ninth or tenth grade. Boys became a widely discussed subject (FYI I went to an all-girl school, which I think amps up the giggly factor when it comes to the opposite sex). Magazines like DOLLY and Girlfriend became frequent buys. Then there was the media. Oh, the media. (Is it ironic I ended up doing a degree on this very subject?) I grew up in a generation that was exposed to the new media outlets, and honestly, it freaks me out how many new things pop up everyday. I can’t keep up!

It may be easy to blame the media for everything – the bony supermodels, the “must try” diets, the “you won’t be beautiful unless you have this or do this” infomercials (does anyone actually buy that stuff?!), the freakishly good-looking television actresses on your favourite shows… the list goes on. But is that really where this innate desire to be beautiful or pretty really began? When we were little girls, did most of our mothers not try to teach us good manners and dress us in pretty dresses with abnormally large bows sitting on our heads? And if our friend’s bow was bigger than ours, we demanded a larger one so we’d be as pretty as her? Did we not obsess over our blonde barbie dolls? I’m not trying to blame our mothers (goodness knows they have enough on their plates to contend with), but as I did my reflecting, that’s what I saw my childhood as. And it only gets worse as we get older. We get introduced to make-up, and a lot of us can’t go out without it lest we expose our real, ugly faces to the world. Those of us who don’t do this get judged by a world obsessed with outer beauty. It’s no secret being pretty gets you ahead a lot faster in all areas of life. I know I can’t change this. I know I’m a part of it. I just hope I don’t lose myself in the process. Where does the line get drawn between the image we project to the world and the person we really are inside? Xx

Un-Pretty Me

She’s the girl with a lonely heart
Sitting in the back
The girl who’s always left behind
What other girls have she lacks

No songs are ever written about
The sadness that she cries
No stories made about the way
She always gets left behind

She’s not pretty like the other girls
She’s plain as plain can be
Standing out in an endless crowd
Of preconceived beauty

It’s hard to love what you already have
When the world is made this way
When being beautiful gets you ahead
And plain is a price to pay

You tell me that looks aren’t everything
And I agree with you
But tell that to the girl in the back
With her heart broke clean in two

Can’t help that this is who she is
Can’t help she’s not like them
She looks into the mirror each day
And hates what she can’t mend

For when we’re young and our mothers smile
And says, “how pretty she is”
We are taught right from the very start
That at pretty is where it begins

And when we’re fifteen and seventeen
Flipping through magazines
They say, “Get her hair, lose that weight
This is who you want to be”

Then when we’re finally twenty-one
It’s far too late to change
Consumed by an image-based society
But the media we do not blame

Instead we look in the mirror each day
And point at the average girl
The foundation, liner and mascara goes on
To hide our plain face from the world

But the plain girl doesn’t do that
Boys don’t ever look at her
It’s the price that she must pay
To stay true to all she’s worth

So she sits in the back of the classroom
And prays to God each day
Wishing for that moment when
She knows she’s beautiful – just this way.

© Lily K. Lynn 2011

Perfect Girl

One day, quite a long time ago, I was sitting here thinking about who my role models were. This somehow got me thinking about us girls in general, and how a lot of us feel we can never measure up to our own standards. Whether it’s having to lose more weight, find a better boyfriend (or find a boyfriend period), get a better job, get a better wardrobe…there’s always something. Then we see other girls, who are more beautiful than us, skinnier, with brighter smiles, legs for days, and we think we will never measure up to her because she seems to have it all. The world is kinder to her, not to poor average me, but her. That’s when the yearning begins, and the self-deprecation. On those days, we don’t know why we bother with ourselves and some of us secretly bake cookies and eat them all (not me, of course…cough). So what came out of all this was this piece of poetry. It’s not as sad as I’m making it sound. For me, it’s a reflection of what I think these beautiful girls look like to us from the outside. I have poems to come about what may actually be going on on the inside, but I’ll get to that later. This one is what I think when I see that “perfect girl”, whether she’s a celebrity or a random girl walking down the street. The irony of all this is that these pretty girls are just as likely as us to think the same thing about other girls they see, and we ourselves may be subject to the “perfect girl” projection without even knowing it (except for ME of course, I hear you say).

What do you think of when you think of perfection? Do you think our judgements are clouded when we see a beautiful person? How does beauty affect you? Goodness knows the media and society puts pressure on us to look good all the time. Let me know what you think if you have a moment. Xx

Perfect Girl

They all watch her as she walks by
Slowly blinking those beautiful eyes
They’re hazel, green, a little blue
They all watch her as I do

 I wonder if she knows her charm
She’s got him resting on her palm
Her flawless skin and perfect hair
Does she know she’s something rare?

Her smile lights up the entire room
Enough to make all grown men swoon
He looks at her with dewy eyes
Every time she passes by

There’s nothing wrong about this girl
She’s everything beautiful about this world
She’s sweet, and kind, and intelligent
Yet she never asks for acknowledgment

Oh how I wish I could be like her
Make him weak without a word
Flawless skin and flawless hair
She makes my insides feel so bare

She’s pretty and she’s good to her friends
Never stuck-up, but still confident
He watches her in utter awe
Dreams about her until dawn

I ask to be her for just one day
To know how it is to be that way
For him to look at me with those eyes
Every time I pass him by

But my reflection stares back at me
Everything about her I don’t see
It’s just my hair, my average eyes
My flawed skin I cannot hide

Oh I’ll never be this girl
This everything beautiful about the world
Keep wishing, dreaming, that’s all I do
As all the other girls do so too

But I’ll never forget her pretty face
How she holds herself with such grace
She’s everything beautiful about this world
And I think: my oh my, what a perfect girl.

© Lily K. Lynn 2011