Lose 10 pounds. Die your hair. Take out that earing. Never wear orange. No nail polish.  Whiten your teeth. What do you mean you didn’t prepare an extra song? Don’t tell me that’s a carb your eating. You lost 10 pounds? Loose another 5.  All of your time should be spent in a studio not at football games. Why can’t you take an extra dance class? It’s fall now die your hair back again. Never get a tan. Did you even whiten your teeth last night? Why are you shaking? Stop it. Are you nervous? You should be. This is it. This is the time. This is your time. You’re looking a little too skinny now. Push harder you can do this. Nothing else should matter. Can’t you feel the energy? I’m sorry this is not the job for you. Next! Alright you fell, it only means your not doing enough. Make you’re come back. Drink more tea, but never with lemon. Dairy? If your eating dairy you can just take your things and go. This headshot is garbage do you even see how your face looks? You can’t sing this. You’re too big for this role. Just a pretty face won’t get you on that stage sweetheart. You only train 30 hours a week? We don’t care if the blisters on your heels are bleeding through your shoes. Sweat more, but never too much we don’t want pimples. Go, have a social life! But only surround yourself with the ones who are in our world. Oh right you have homework. Well that’s what the train is for. Cover up the bruises on your legs those won’t get you anywhere. Smile. Stand strong. No that’s too confident they must never think you’re cocky. Why don’t you have time for more community service? Build your resume, build your application. Get your game face on. We are so sorry but we have decided to go in a different direction. Brush it off, you have talent now show it. Train more, audition more, work more, take class more, stretch more… just be more. 

Silently screaming I blink and every thought, every criticism, every time I have been told “no" shatters beneath the well worn in marley floor.  My beautiful Italian leather 3inch heel slides onto my foot and takes an extra pull by my heel as it is gently placed over the blister that has been broken 50 times over. With the $3 cover-up I had bought at rite-aid that day I gaze down at my calf covered in bruises and cuts from fall after fall. In one sweep they are gone, hidden away, hidden from the world where perfection isn’t expected but demanded.  Every class, every hour of hard work, annotating scripts word for word and finding the perfect song in just the right key was all worth it in this very moment. With my mind focused on my main goal and my body in agonizing pain from class the night before I moved swiftly across the stage and took my assigned mark on the red x at center. My lips had just begun to part only so much that the smallest piece of skin was still touching. Yet before my lungs even caught the slightest glimpse of air, before I could even get out a sound let alone share my name… I was stopped dead in my tracks.  Without a word the bald man proudly wearing his ‘director’ tag lifted a hand. “Thank you, we’ve seen all we needed to see.”