Are you happy?
Are you as happy as your parents?
Do you love him?
Are you sure you’ll love him forever?
Is there such a thing as loving a person forever?

I used to end every sentence with “when I lose weight.”
I’ll be more energetic.
When I lose weight...I’ll catch the eye of the man I want.
When I lose weight...I’ll be better at my job.
When I lose weight...I’ll attend more social gatherings.
When I lose weight...I’ll get more roles in movies and plays

For years, I never cried in front of anyone.
“Man up. You’re weak,”
My mother used to tell me.

She stood, pretty as a picture,
In the midst of a place that despised beauty.
The eyes of the passengers, once cold and dead, were now filled with anger and jealousy.
Filled with unspoken words I’ve heard before.

We were all girls like you once.
I was a young girl just like you before marrying your father.
We all went through the same things.
We’d just play sports and take a cold shower.

I know how to tweeze and thread.
I'm an employee by day, but I do these things at night.
The troll I'm married to sits at home all day and doesn't make a penny to spend on the kids, and he gives me a beating every other day or so.

I’m a woman who has been struggling her entire life.
Ever since I was a little girl,
I’ve been struggling.
My father was a national railways inspector.
He passed away.
I got married to a man who came from a modest family.
I thought they’d care about my wellbeing.

Imagine that you’re a teenager, 13 years old, and you’re mocked nearly every day at school
because you weigh too much.
On top of that, imagine some of the stupid things that your classmates and teachers say,
social stigma, social pressure, masculinity, bullying, body image

Don’t you dare think of pressing charges like those women in the movie did.
A respectable girl would never go into a police station full of men and tell them that a man, for example, grabbed her here or touched her leg.
This country is full of incidents like these, and women never speak up. Don’t you go playing the hero

I wanted to move out and live alone.
My father, in order to prevent me from leaving,
Locked the door and chased after me.
My mother came after us.