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 used to be a swimmer.
I am dark-skinned,
Because I used to go to swim practice every morning.
I’m the only person in my family with curly hair.
Not a day would pass without someone commenting on my hair and skin.

I always thought I was adopted,
Or maybe I wasn’t their daughter….
I’m the eldest of my siblings,
I was born normally,
With olive skin and curly hair.
But I was seen as dark-skinned, ugly, and with coarse hair.
Things got worse when my younger sister was born three years later.
She was born with pale skin and straight hair.

I’m 16 years old.
People have made fun of me ever since I was little.
My father was very short,
And I was born a twin.
To make sense of the way I looked,
They used to tell me,
That my twin brother was trying to absorb me,
When we were in our mother’s womb.
But what happened was that he absorbed my food instead.

I gained weight as I grew up.
I was still a kid when aunties started commenting on my weight.
“You’ve become fat,” they said.
When I was a teenager,
Mama used to criticize my weight all the time.
body image, bullying, family

I’ve been bullied for my body ever since I was young.
Unlike everyone else,
I was really thin and I still am.
I never really cared about the "french body type,”
Which people told me I had,
As much as I cared about the hurtful comments people made about my body.
body image, bullying

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

Mama used to always tell me,
“I used to cry because you refused to eat.
You weighed only 8 kilos when you were five,
And you were going to die!”
When I turned 6,
I started gaining weight, and then gaining some more.
I started getting comments at home, then at school, then from society at large.
body image, beauty standards, bullying, mental health

I went to school in an Arab country.
I was kind of chubby,
But not obese.
I just carried some extra weight.
And my breasts were a little big,
Compared to the other kids.
body image, bullying, masculinity