How to Be Pretty

You need to eat. From birth to adolescence, amass an obscene amount of weight. Let the fat sag from your arms; let it trail behind every movement. Mind your hips. Mind them! Maneuver them around school desks and through turnstiles.

Develop a scowl that envelops you. Obey it more than your brain, your heart, your interloping stomach.

Consider your appearance at any given interval of any one act of physical exertion. Potential for mortification lurks at every juncture, thus, you determine, all acts are pointless.

Do not touch or be touched. Do not discern between positive and negative attention. Slap both forms away, verbally. Hiss, and steep.

Find yourself squatting at the refrigerator door, fashioning a lollipop from a spoonful of peanut butter dipped gingerly into a bag of chocolate chips. Eat it pantsless on the couch. Upon smudging the brocade, turn the cushion over. Throw away the flimsy handfuls of cellophane that have accumulated beneath.

Trudge. Continue to trudge through the halls with congenial defeat.

Peer down at the scale. Comprehend the number as it relates to gravity.

Put down the food. Resist the constant itch in your tongue and your feet to move quickly to the nearest trough. The exertion of will takes practice. Put down the food.

When your cravings are so strong you might float, drink from the tap.

Sit down to sip.

Get up to refill your glass.

Repeat until your feet stand sturdy on the floor.

Chew boiled chicken, broccoli, and leaves. Sharpen your stare.

When you’re almost there, buy a dress. Study yourself in the changing room mirror. Notice how your bones are surfacing like ominous islands under the flesh.

Smile! Your mouth is wide and sharp.

You’re here. Your phantom outline, too. No one else can see.

Get drunk for the first time and saunter toward a mirror. Gaze at yourself wearing a sweater that once clung sweaty to your back. Shrug it up onto your shoulders until the sleeves graze your fingertips.

Don’t you just feel so small? Don’t you just look the way you always felt?

Stumble upon the arguing boys. Interrupt their conversation to remind them men are useless. Assert your vast, unending differences. Belittle their efforts. Steal their tequila.

Meet the eye of the last one standing. When an unexpected light turns on, blink with the full weight of your lashes. Turn your chin so your lips brush against your brand new swoop of shoulder.

Feel his palms contend with your hips in clumsy silence. Observe that when he moans, he appears to be under water. He could be drowning, and you are the indifferent tide.

Close your eyes to maintain his dignity.

When you realize it’s over, resist the urge to goad him into noticing.

“I like your curls,” you say anyway.

“Thanks,” he replies.

“And what about mine?”

“Your what?”

Watch him leave your room at night, when party sounds still ripple through the campus trees. Lie back in bed. Pat the ridge across your hipbones that will never stretch taut. Twist the skin with your thumbs; watch it wrinkle, and keep. You’re pretty now. But you’re always not.

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