Girls, I know that at this age, you like to flaunt your beauty.
“Look at my long hair!
Look at whatever!”
Here, you must forget about all those things.
The uniform you must wear is a galabiyya.
The kind your mothers wear.

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 have a birthmark on my face,
That takes up almost half of it.
Ever since I was young,
I got annoying comments and questions such as,
“Look! Her face is burned.”
“What’s up with your face?”
“Is that a burn on your face?”
body image, bullying, beauty standards

I’ve never known what it’s like to feel beautiful.
Every day I am reminded that I am fat,
That my "messy” hair looks bad,
And that I have a weird face.
My own mother tells me daily that I should lose weight.

I used to have a good body.
Then, one year,
I gained a lot of weight,
Because of health issues.
People have been treating me differently ever since.
They even look at me differently,
Even though I’m still the exact same person.

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

Ever since I was young,
I was told that my hair wasn’t nice.
I’ve been straightening my hair since elementary school.
Everyone around me made fun of me.
They called me “brillo pad.”

I’ve always been chubby.
My family didn’t have a problem with that,
Thank God.
And they never told me that I needed to lose weight.
But when I was young,
Mama didn’t like dressing me in revealing clothing,
So that no one would give me the evil eye.

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.

Brushing my hair as a child was a real burden to me.
My mother would pull it really hard when she brushed it.
It was as if she was punishing me for having “bad” hair.
Combing it was a difficult process.
“Your hair is disgusting. I’m sick of it,” she used to tell me.
She used to push me away if I cried because it hurt, saying,
“Get up. I won’t brush it for you.”
body image, hair, beauty standards, bullying