We were the weird girls. We were the type of 3rd graders that would trade Pokemon cards in the girl's bathroom and pretend we were apart of The Hunger Games. During water breaks, we cartwheeled to the fountain until our ponytail holders fell onto the carpeted floor. At recess, instead of playing tag with the other girls we made purses out of old paper from our classroom’s recycle bin. We were the girls who would bring our own lunches to school; we sat at our desks eating sandwiches cut into hearts, stars, hexagons, diamonds, and other unique shapes. We wore polka dotted sweaters with striped leggings because it was comfortable, and we thought we looked pretty. We were the kids the popular girls whispered about. They would talk about how we needed to act our age, they told us we were ugly because we still hadn’t started wearing eyeshadow.

We watched them grow; they transformed into girls with pretty faces and very skinny thighs. By middle school, we started feeling ugly and realized we wanted to change. We hid our appetites in front of the boys. We were told we should tighten the straps to our bras and wear thongs that we had to buy ourselves because it was too awkward to ask our moms. When we started to effectively see a change, the mornings before school consisted of our moms telling us to change our clothes so we wouldn’t make our dads scream. We started wearing makeup, we covered up our freckles and scars. The feeling of sadness always surrounded us because our lives were now a competition, of the best dressed, and prettiest face. We started telling ourselves to just throw the food up because we could almost see our ribs poking out through our Brandy Melive tank tops.

We tried to act older, but we still couldn't walk in heels, and couldn't fill the bra size that would rank us higher in the boy's eyes. We became friends with the girls who once whispered about us. We were upset when we realized that our skin would never shine the way plastic did. We became the girls that whispered, we weren’t the ones being whispered about. When we saw their chubby hips, we pointed and laughed. The numbers on the tags of their jeans could make us feel less fat. We only said those things because we were given the confidence from the man in front of our school; every day he would tell us that we had nice legs, and that we should smile. He made us feel like we were enough.

Monday through Friday, during third period, the phone would always ring. Our teacher would then tell us to go down to the office. We always pretended to just forget about it. We changed in the locker room, pulling up our sweatpants, and covering our cheasts with baggy shirts. While we changed, we watched the older girls stare at themselves in the mirror. We watched them talk about how their magical moments in bed, which ended by running all over the city to find the morning after pill, and how they were saving up for a nose job when they turned 18. When they left we took their place, we stood there talking, and comparing our bodies.

We always got angry when we looked in the mirror, we’d been on diets for weeks but still weren't satisfied. Minutes later, we helped each other throw up, rubbing each other's backs, and shoving our fingers down our throats. We then binged on images of beautiful women, huge breasts, big lips, pretty faces, and cute tiny noses. They had everything we wanted. We wondered if it was because they were eating less, or just barfing more. They didn’t have zits, hair on their upper lips, or stretch marks covering their thighs like racecar tracks. They probably received snapchats from boys asking them if they wanted to hang out later that weekend. We wanted their lives because ours were worthless, and theirs were perfect.

We felt empty, we wondered if it was sadness, or just because we were hungry. We finally understood why everyone laughed at us when we were younger. We were still ugly and undesired, just like we always had been. We were up to the point where we wondered what day we would finally decide to expire.