“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.”

My hair changed as I got older. It became frizzy and messy.
My mom always tied it back for me.
It made me cry because I wanted to let my hair down like the other girls.
I didn’t like receiving comments and getting weird looks from my relatives.
“Why is your hair so messy?”
“Brush your hair.”
And other comments I still remember until this day.
body image, hair, bullying, beauty standards

I’ve always been fat though with varying degrees.
I’m on a diet now, and I’m trying to eat healthy.

All my life, people have been telling me to lose weight,
Regardless of who these people are and what sort of relationship I have with them.
body image, bullying, beauty standards, parents

I’m a dark-skinned girl.
I was, of course, bullied all throughout my school and university years.
I was called “chocolate.”
It used to upset me,
But I didn’t tell mama.
I was scared of her.
She, herself, would introduce me to her friends by saying,
“My daughter is black and ugly.”
body image, racism, bullying

I’m a girl like any other girl,
But unfortunately,
Society doesn’t consider me to be like any other girl,
Because I’m cross eyed.
When someone jokes about it,
Either to me or someone else,
It causes me a lot of pain.
It’s true they’re only joking around,
But it cuts me to the core.

I used to braid my kinky hair in school.
It was a bit poofy at the top.
The girls at school would pull my hair and undo my braid.
My hair would get frizzy and I wouldn’t know how to tie it.
The teachers would yell at me to tie my hair.
body image, hair, beauty standards, bullying

I’ve had a binge eating disorder ever since I was a child.
I only became aware of it,
And tried to do something about it,
When I was 21 years old.
I started gaining weight when I was 10.
I would visit a nutritionist every week.

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.

I hate how I look.
I’m the shortest one in the family.
I have very wide eyes,
And I am dark-skinned.

Ever since I was born,
I’ve been really hairy.
My feet are also big and don’t look nice.
All my life I’ve gotten comments from my family,
About how, poor me, was so hairy.
You’d think I had a disease.
It was like, “What will we do with that poor thing?”
body image, bullying, hair