I hate my skin.
It’s full of flaws.
My face and back are full of painful pimples.
Dark areas, red areas, holes, and splotches.
I hate how people look at me,
Especially when I’m already feeling low.
Even mama, baba, and my younger siblings,
All look at me with a mixture of disgust and pity on their faces.

My forehead is kind of big.
I’ve always been bullied because of how I looked,
My forehead,
And my hair—
Which isn’t bad by the way,
But it isn't as beautiful as everyone else’s in the family.
I’ve always heard things like,
“Your hair could work as an antenna for the T.V.”

Every single day,
People passing me by in the street,
Shout insults at me:
“Blackie!”
“Shikabala!”
“Why’s it dark all of the sudden?”
“Disgusting!”

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

I am a curly-haired girl.
Everyone calls my hair scraggly.
Everyone insists that I should straighten it,
But I don’t want to.

I’m a 17 year old boy.
I used to be made fun of all the time for being thin.
I wasn’t remarkably thin or frail,
My weight was optimal,
Not a pound heavier and not a pound lighter.
It wasn’t just society that made fun of my body,
Unfortunately, I was made fun of at home.
body image, bullying, family

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 parents are Nubian.
I was born olive-skinned,
Like most Egyptians.
My brother, however,
Who’s a year and a half older than me,
Was darker-skinned,
Like most Nubians.
That’s not the only problem:
My brother has a disability:
A chronic ulcer on the sole of his foot.

That day, I sat there and pretended to play by myself because I was alone,
My neighbors weren’t talking to me that day.
At the time my neighbors were my group of friends: Manara, Nesma, Shaimaa.
They were sisters.

French teacher, bragging about her daughter's 50ish kgs perfect weight,
While my classmates, 15 y/o, join the discussion some being below that,
Some slightly above, but everyone in the room were of a normal weight except me,