It Happened to Me
Open Letter to Women Who Hate Being a Woman or Who Hate Other Women
Talk about strange fruit
Dear Women (and the men who love or hate us women),
I used to take sticks of margarine and rub them on my breasts because I heard through the puberty grapevine who read Judy Blume books that smearing butter into your breasts could make them grow. Margarine was just as good as butter for such purposes, right?
There’s a faded burn scar below my right wrist from where I missed putting a blazing hot iron onto my hair and got my skin instead while trying to fry away the curls and frizziness out of my naturally curly locks as a teenager. Countless times have I left minor burns on my face, ears, neck, and hands from curling irons while aiming for the right look.
I put lemon juice on my face before lying in the sun in hopes of eradicating the millions of freckles that taunted and teased me every summer. Little did I know that I was actually begging them to rear their melanin heads by laying in the rays of sunshine at whose feet I worshipped.
It’s absurd how much time I have spent over the course of my life counting calories or recording how much I weigh (always in the morning after I have relieved my bladder and before drinking or eating…
