A lifetime ago I happened to read
a line that will forever haunt me,
“You will never look like the girl in the magazine;
the girl in the magazine doesn’t even look like the girl in the magazine.”
And even though that sentence has two parts that built
it up into a powerful statement that should be screamed
off of rooftops to reach the ears of every teen
struggling with a plethora of insecurities,
what I carried forth was simply
how I’d never look like the girl in the magazine.
From then on, every cover I glanced,
there she was — following me.
Soaked in beauty with a dazzling smile;
I was blinded and she was pretty, white.
Dressed to the nines and her hair would float
as if the wind blew just to kiss her face,
right by her side there would be a guy she’d hold
with a “she’s my world” look on his face.
It would send me to the deepest part of my soul
trying very hard to remind myself this is not the reality.
“There’s a camera in front of her, this is just a pose,”
but insecurity would win in trapping me.
It rang like a chant in my head: I’d never look like the girl in the magazine.
But I want it so
terribly.
So, I spent years and years
trying to scrub the color of my skin.
The girl in the magazine is white sunshine,
my dusky skin will pale in comparison.
Confidence and power pour out of her every inch,
with cleavage so sensual and a waist so tiny,
flat stomach and legs as long as they are shiny;
she doesn’t even dress like the women around me.
The pleats on her skirt are nothing like the ones my mom carefully draped on my saree.
With frustrated fingers I ripped off my saree
and went online to buy a trickled-down knock-off.
I left my roots and my culture to catch dust,
while I tried to catch onto someone I will never be.
It’s been years since I first glanced at that magazine.
Time spent alienating myself from my roots,
scrubbing the color off my skin;
time spent collecting clothes that never quite pulled out the grace
from within that my mom’s carefully draped saree did;
time spent building stack after stack of magazines,
trying to look like someone who would never look like me.
I got lost between nowhere and somewhere,
and she seems further now than she had ever been.
I got lost trying to fit my feet
into Cinderella’s Jimmy Choos.
My skin bruised and bled, but the color didn’t fade,
and all the heirloom sarees my mom passed down to me — I don’t know how to drape.
But at the end of the day,
with all these years spent trying to look like someone
who would never look like me,
all that I have left is how
one can’t look like the girl in the magazine.