“My daughter is fat and black.
She doesn’t look like her siblings.
Even her brothers look nicer than she does.”
I’ve been taught to hate my body ever since I was young.
“You’re fat, black, and you have eyes as small as buttons.”
“Look at all the other girls. You’ll never get married.”
I am olive-skinned.
There’s nothing special about my features; I look like any other Egyptian.
I have oily skin.
I’ve had acne since I was a teenager,
And I didnt know how to deal with it.
I was bullied at school a lot as a kid.
“Wash your face! You look dirty.”
“You look like so and so, but she looks cleaner than you!”
These are the kinds of things I would hear as a kid from my colleagues and sometimes even my own family.
My hair is curly,
And I love it.
I’m tired of the stupid things people say to me.
Going out is one of the worst experiences ever.
I feel a knot in my stomach whenever I’m about to go out.
I don’t know if this is social anxiety.
I have self-confidence,
And I love my hair.
I wish people would accept differences.
What’s wrong with being an overweight child?
Why was I, as a 6 or 7 year old, subjected to talk like,
“Stop eating. You’re fat.”
I went to a nutritionist before I even turned 10 to help me lose weight.
I tried a hundred different diets.
Maybe one out of every ten would work a little.
So I know I'm not that pretty,
But as you know, Arabs go head over heels for girls with pale faces and colored eyes,
And I happened to have those genes
-Although my sister doesn't and She always gets rude comments about it,
I didn’t drink milk because I didn’t
want to grow breasts ...
I’ve been subjected to bad things ever since I was a child.
It started with the bullying I’d get at school,
Because of my thin body and dark skin.