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The genie said he’d be granted a wish.
Instantly he knew what it would be.
Smiling happily for the first time he could remember, with a voice hushed and breathless, he asked.
"I'd like to know what it's like being a girl."
The genie laughed and vanished.
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She walked into the high school cafeteria and stood in line. She watched the boys getting their food. They jostled and rough housed and teased some of the girls. Not her.
She took her food and looked for a place to sit. Some girls were congregating, but they would not welcome her. She didn’t belong with them. They were the ones the boys had been teasing. She walked by a table where those boys were laughing and talking. None of them glanced as she passed. She ate alone.
As she was leaving, about to put her tray away, she stumbled. Her plate and silverware careened into the air, hitting a boy on the back. He turned and glared.
“Watch where you’re going you stupid cow,” he’d said.
She’d fled.
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Standing, now, in the girl’s restroom she looked at her reflection: lank mousey hair framed a chubby face marked here and there by acne. Unremarkable eyes gazed at a face without clear feature, where everything seemed, to her, to be flat, fat and ugly. Her body was shaped like a pear. Her breasts barely made a ripple in her sweatshirt. It was hard to find a waist between her upper body and her enormous hips.
Her mother said she was far harder on herself than she should be; that she was really no different than any other girl. Her mother said she was only a little overweight. All she needed, mom said, was a little exercise, some make-up, and more care with her face clearing medication. If she’d only make the effort, insisted her mother, she could be pretty.
She knew better. She was homely and fat.
Her reflection told her so.
The prom was coming soon. She knew she would not be invited to go. Even if she were, by some miracle, invited, it would be a terrible hardship to her family to pay for a dress. She would not ask them.
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Silently hating the reflection in the mirror, she barely heard other girls, laughing girls, pretty girls, enter the restroom. They were the golden ones.
She did not know how many were like her: ugly, ignored.
She could not imagine she would ever be loved.
A tear leaked from the corner of her eye and slipped down her cheek.
She knew what it was like to be a girl.
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Comments
Be Careful What You Wish For
A refreshing and extremely well written departure from the usual tropes. As powerful a statement about alienation as I've seen in such a short piece.
Nicki:
Thank you so much.
As I've previously said elsewhere, I wrote this piece as a kind of balm. I remember this girl from school. Though it was not deliberate, I was among those who ignored her. I very much regret that now. I've cried over it. This story is my attempt at repentance.
That Genie was cruel in
granting the wish, but she can undo his cruelty, in time.
May Your Light Forever Shine
As much as I still long for what I never had?
....I think that even if I was accepted at home, being me as a teenage girl would have been even harder. Not all of us grow up to be Daddy's princess, aye? Too close and yet not near enough to home, I suppose.
Love, Andrea Lena
Andrea
I must admit, Andrea, that your stories have provide a good bit of my inspiration. You taught me how stories can show profound introspection, and angst.
Why not accept being another girl...
I am not so naive to think if I were a girl that I would have the right to be just the girl/woman I would like to be. I like the story for the reality it presents us. To what extent would it be true what her mother said about her ability to deal with how others saw her?
Would not life possibly hold some possibilities one did not plan for? If I asked to be beautiful by whose standards would it come to pass? If I am bitter and self-centered now would I be as well if I were a girl? If I doubted as she does here her own value, might that not have been carried over from how I saw myself before?
I like your story Elizabeth as it is and would like to see where it goes from here.
Hugs, JessieC
Jessica E. Connors
Jessica Connors
Jessie
You have hit upon one of the things I hoped to do here. I wanted the reader to ask themselves who might be right: the girl, that she is ugly; or her mother, that her heart break is the result more of self-image than of physical form.
I side with mom. Studies have shown that girls, even the prettiest ones, have self-image issues; and frequently those issues become debilitating. Guys tend to imagine themselves as better looking than others might see them. For girls, it is the reverse.
And yes, had the protagonist asked for beauty as well as gender; would the Djinn have made her beautiful according to his/her standard? or would he use prevailing social standards...or would the Genie have remade her according to Djinn standards? Beauty truly is in the eye of the beholder. In this case, I tried to see through the eyes of the newly made girl. Sadly,she suffers from the same issue that afflicts so many girls; she cannot see herself as anything but unattractive.
Self image can make a huge difference
In how it effects just how well a person does with their social interactions. Even a person who is physically good looking will have a hard time fitting in and making friends if they see themselves as ugly in some way and leads them to having a negative self image and little to no self confidence. This will cause that person to shut out much of the rest of the world, will be perpetually unhappy and lead them to live in a self imposed state of isolation. Where as, having a positive self image, a person is able to have a self confidence that can easily over come their lack of physical beauty. And as the characters mother keeps suggesting a good makeup job and the right clothes can also make a big difference.
I know this to be true from first hand experience. Before I started my transition, I had a very negative self image, little self confidence, I was depressed, lonely and had very few friends. Basically my life totally sucked. However, that all began to change once I started transitioning. I used to hate and loth the person I saw looking back at me in a mirror, but as the changes from HRT began to become visible and I started looking more like the woman my heart was telling me I am, I found that I no longer hated and loathed the person looking back at me in the mirror. In fact for the first time in my life I realized that I now loved the person I saw in the mirror. Needless to say as my self image improved, so did my self confidence. My therapist was astounded by how much I had changed in the year and a half that I had been seeing her. She described my transformation of going from a very shy, introverted person into the warm, self confident out going person that I became, as if she were watching a flower budding and then coming into full bloom. I now have more friends then I can count and get invited out on a regular basis.
Hugs,
Tamara Jeanne
Our Reflection...in the mirror and the eyes of those who love us
Oh my goodness. How wonderful it is that you are "becoming" outside what you know to be inside!
And yes. You are so right. Self-image is a defining characteristic. It colors all our relationships...including our relationship with ourselves.
I thought
I thought I read this story somewhere once before. I'm just trying to figure out where.
I got my answer.