I place powder and lipstick on my face so that I can cover up the imperfections I didn’t know I had till the media pointed out to me. My stomach is not flat enough and my waist is not thin enough. I don’t have an hourglass figure nor will I ever have one. Yet my boobs are not big enough nor is my butt. My lips can never be full enough no matter what I do. I want to claw at my skin because it can never be perfect. The pimple that meant I was growing up has now become a problem.

I hold my body close to me even though I’m conditioned to hate it and as I see someone that is prettier than me I realize that I can never be a ten. I look in the mirror that should be broken from my reflection with the way I look. My mascara is down my face as I cry in the corner trying to comfort myself.

A million beauty products, a million routines and yet the ugly never goes away. The ugly I reference is my face. The face that I loved so much as a child but now a teen, I hate it. Without a little makeup I feel insecure even though people say it doesn’t change the way I look. I shudder at the thought of someone seeing a pimple on my face.

Body positivity, I can fake it. I know what clothes make me look good or what clothes that are baggy that you don’t know what’s underneath it. I’m short and I wear heels to make me look taller even though they hurt my feet. Makeup takes too long but I do it anyway.

A person will touch their ribs and yet they're still too fat, no eating that day. You have people cutting their wrist and killing themselves because they can’t reach the perfect them. Even though the perfect them is the one they see. Comparing themselves to one another like a sick and twisted game. A game we didn’t sign up for but rather were pushed into it.

I don’t want to be part of this game but I am and I don’t know how to get out. I’m at the point where I care about people’s stares, strangers I don’t know nor will ever get to know. What do they think about me? I don’t know but I input the worst things about me into my head. I could pick out my faults faster than I can my family.

Perfection, I can never reach it. I know this. I walk a broken path of beauty standards that I’ll never reach. I’m on Earth and they’re the stars. Impossible. My children will grow up in a world were the looks they got from their parents will be called ugly because it isn’t the new thing.  

How am I supposed to tell my children to love themselves, when I can’t even love myself?