I’m a guy.
I was ten years old at the time.
We were living in a family house,
Which meant I was oftentimes left alone with other family members.
They’d tell me they were just going to play with my toys,
But we never actually played with them.

“Do you have good or bad hair?”
I get this question all the time from everyone around me.
But I’ve never mustered up the courage to reply.
So I tell them: “Yeah, my hair isn’t straight.”
Despite my family’s efforts to convince me that I had nice hair as a baby,
All of the kids at school were skilled in the art of bullying.
body image, hair, beauty standards, bullying

I remember during my early teenage years,
When I’d go the beach with my family.
I was 2 or 3 kilos overweight.
Mama has been commenting on my weight and the way my body looks ever since.
body image, parents, bullying

Ever since I was little,
I’ve been underweight,
And I’m not tall.
I’ve always gotten criticism from everyone around me:
“Why do you look like that? Who eats your food?”
“You need to fatten up a bit, my dear. Otherwise, you’ll be an old maid,
And nobody will look at you.”

I was born with an extreme case of dowager's hump,
And it looks very pronounced when I wear certain clothes.
When I was a child,
My mother tried to get it fixed,
But that meant that I had to wear a huge back brace all the time.
body image, bullying, beauty standards

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 always hear negative comments when I was a kid about my hair and looks.
My mother never told me that my hair looked nice.
body image, hair, bullying, beauty standards

When I was in the eighth grade, there was a boy with me at school who was blond and fair-skinned. He was a grade younger than I was.
Wherever he went, the other students would harass him. He was absent a lot because of this. His father came in to complain more than once but to no avail.

I have a jaw deformity.
I was born with it.
So were my siblings.
It’s genetic,
But my parents fixed theirs early on so it was easy.
There’s an age gap between me and my siblings,
So by the time I got here,
My parents had a lot of issues,
And we couldn't fix mine.

My mother had always wanted a daughter with European features.
Luckily, I was born with European features.
People couldn’t even tell that I was Egyptian.
But, unfortunately, I had curly hair.
I got all sorts of comments from my family and people I wasn’t even related to.
“Poor thing. She’s beautiful but she has bad hair.”
Can you imagine a 6-year-old getting her hair done at the hairdresser’s almost every week?
body image, hair, bullying, beauty standards