Woman

You're never perfect, are you now? 

Sometimes slightly fatter than you ought to be, 

Sometimes just a little too skinny with no real ass or breasts to look at, 

Sometimes too bossy trampling over frail egos, 

Sometimes not leader enough to have ever made the best of that position. 

Sometimes too showy for a place you work at, 

Sometimes too plain to ever make a difference. 

All your mistakes, big or small,  

looked into with the zooming of a high powered microscope, 

Never good enough, never bad enough, 

It's not you, it's all you. 

Even if we dismiss all of this with a wave of our hand,  

We have now internalized this. 

Never to be satisfied with our decisions. 

Second guessing every step. 

Why is it that boys will always be boys 

With a paunch, barking orders, with no implicit requirement to care, 

No implicit requirement to display maternal love to people that aren't related to them, 

And girls are taught to grow up to be the perfect wife, perfect daughter in law, perfect mother? 

Why is it always the woman 

who has to take the pill? 

Wonder if her period is just late 

Or is it something else? 

Insert an IUD, deal with a pregnancy,  

And people continue to say,  

Who asked her to go have sex,  

Who asked her to taint her body,  

As though a woman has "no control" and "all control" over her body, 

As though that visceral pleasure is too much for a woman to experience,  

Much more than she will ever deserve. 

I'm so tired of only thinking about how I look, 

The hairs that pop up on my legs and on my chin, 

Forgetting completely how I feel and who I am, 

How much more of a person I really am, 

You take away my image from me, 

and I'm still here, I'll still exist. 

Don't scrutinize every inch of weight they gain, 

Every blemish that has appeared with pain, 

Every wrinkle that marks her golden age, 

Her "turkey neck", a sign of all the years that she looked up 

 at EVERY person who came along the way, 

To tell her she wasn't right, she wasn't ready, 

While she took those giant steps in the shadow of a giant man, unnoticed yet significant. 

Let her go crazy, 

Let her have a paunch or not, 

Let her have an ass or not, 

Let girls be girls too. 

Let her come out in the open, 

Let her cry as much as she likes, it doesn't make her any less of a human being, 

Let her voice not reach the ends of a large room, but her intention to lead stay strong, 

Hoist her on your shoulders, and tomorrow,  

Tomorrow, she will hoist ten of you on hers, 

Without a word of appreciation, because she has learnt to mark her own successes. 

That's the woman I know, staring into the mirror, 

Wondering if this could really be. 

That woman is you, 

That woman is me, 

Reminding herself that perfection is just a failed pursuit in this hollow hypocritical reality. 

Post-script: 

I apparently wrote this in October 2016, and by the way, I did NOT know the existence of the term "Turkey neck". Sheesh. I think it came up as a diss on one of the women senators or journalists or someone at the time, and I was so mad at the violation and acceptance of all things abnormal, how people used physical aspects of women to demean them when it has absolutely nothing to do with their work. 

I recently read Tyra Banks' book, and one of the things she harps about, which I realize is important - whether a woman does botox or not, wears makeup or not, it's completely her choice, it is about what makes her feel good, about what makes her feel comfortable. I myself am guilty of having judged women who were more feminine in the past, because I did not own my own and I was mad at them for letting down the community, which feels so stupid in retrospect.



This self-acceptance of my physical self and my femininity is fairly new to me. This anger too is very new to me and I don't always know what to do with it. But I think poetry helps me deal with expressing at least some part of it. Maybe I will begin to make more sense of things by writing about them.