Next to the video of plus-size models is a
Giant purple ad for Botox just buzzing
at you
Wipe away those smile wrinkles, those
tiny curves in your face
All the lines that show your hard work through long nights
Show you're youthful again
Show the world your cares have melted away like they never existed.
Turn away from that video, from those “large models,”
Erase the laugh lines and the eyebrow ridges
Smooth away the ravines and mountains in your landscape.
Stare down your wrinkles
The wrinkles in the front of your shirt, the curves that accentuate your middle mass
Hidden below hours of careful shopping
and strategic cuts
Not a health issue, but an aesthetic
emergency, a bump ruining the soft smoothness of your body
Your eyes are equipped specifically to lodge on that one bump in the road and stick to it
Find the ugliness in it, feel it on you like a nodule of shame
Bend over it, hide it, store it away as close
as you can, away from prying eyes.
You're hideous.
Your face is like the face of Mars – pitted here and there with red, black, white
Freckles of dirt, bumps of oil and skin, littering the once-perfect fabric of your cheeks
Apply paint daily, cover up the imperfections with a new layer of wallpaper
Lather skin-tinted foundation like lotion, like sunscreen to protect you from the
eyes of others
So accustomed to finding and designing beauty, you can't stand to go without
Yet you'll never be good enough.
Every year
Every year it's a little harder
To age gently with the assistance of needles and diets and makeup
Medicines of your trade
As you lower your head, cover your face, declaring your pride wasted, your
confidence battered
You hide from them all a little deeper every year, feel their judgment grinding deeper
You duck your eyes when he sits across from you
While he mulls, stoops, bends, contorts
his body
Trying to show you the picture he thinks you'll like
Every year it's a little bit harder
His eyes are equipped for beauty
tunnel vision,
Too busy focused on his aesthetic
emergency to notice you.