I always read the news before school. It’s partially because this year in history we’re tested on our knowledge of current events. And partially because I didn’t download the New York Times app for nothing.
The Fantasyland of Miss Universe meets Current Events.
A scathing article mocking the hypocrisy of Miss Universe “empowering” women and attempting to become an event of feminism. It’s worth noting that Donald Trump owned the pageant for nearly nine years.
“And despite the insistence on internationalism, this pageant, like all pageants, is really a festival of uniformity. Virtually every participant is a tall, slim, young woman with long legs, long hair, long (false) eyelashes, perfect(ed) white teeth and precision-sculpted features — all poured into skintight, extremely revealing sequined dresses, atop vertiginous stilettos. The effect is more Rockettes than United Nations.”
I laughed when I read the author’s witty jabs, but they couldn’t mollify the sadness I felt for the rest of the day. We can make fun of the program all we want, but this media blitz sells.
Millions of people tune in to watch women strut around in fantastical costumes while the contestants answer questions about the Ukraine-Russian war. Millions of little girls are mesmerized by the women in revealing unitards, wishing for a transfusion of that confidence. That beauty. That impossible perfection.
In seventh grade I made the mistake of laughing too hard at one of my friends’ jokes. A girl sitting nearby looked at me curiously.
“You know Irena, I never realized this, but I think you have your dad’s nose.”
When my dad was five years old, he tried climbing on top of one of his kitchen cabinets, failed miserably, and fell and broke both his arms and the bridge of his nose. My sister and I used to compare him to Squidward.
I stared at that girl for a second. “That’s nice.”
When I got home from school, I looked at myself really closely in the mirror. She’s wrong. My nose is a little better than my dad’s. It’s not nice, but it’s not comparable to a botched surgery. What would she know; she has fat thighs. But trying to convince myself that my nose wasn’t as bad as my dad’s didn’t take away the sting. That night, I scrawled in my journal:
why would she say that why would she say that why would she say that why would she-
I can laugh at the story now, but I can’t deny that it was her “big nose” comment that propelled my list of insecurities. If I ever came across a genie, I told myself, I would fix me. I’d wish for a smaller waist, smaller thighs, a smaller nose, smaller arms, and at the same time a bigger butt, bigger boobs, bigger eyes. I’d wish for a sharper jawline and angled cheekbones, plump lips and long eyelashes. I’d wish to be pretty. All I wanted was to be pretty.
My older sister’s car jolted to a stop.
“What the fuck are you doing, you psycho, we’re on the highway!” “I know you’re not eating,”
It took me a second to regain my incredulous expression. “What are you even talking about?”
“You skip breakfast everyday, and everyday Melissa sees you at lunch and she says at most you eat an orange, plus at dinner– you barely eat half a serving of everything. I know you’re starving yourself, and I’m gonna tell Mom.”
“Melissa is such a liar, I eat pizza for lunch. And anyway, I always have dance after dinner, so I don’t eat as much but I finish my food after dance.”
“No you don’t- I know you don’t because I saw the food wrapped in the paper towel when I was taking out the garbage.”
“Why are you being so obsessive? I literally eat, ok? Stop being so weird.”
“Irena.” Sonia was almost crying now. “Listen to me. It’s not worth it. You could end up in a hospital. You could die. Please tell me you haven’t lost your period.”
“I haven’t. And I’m not starving myself, you’re so paranoid.”
I hadn’t had my period for five months. Only my journal with daily calorie logs knew the truth:
Monday: 1100 calories, Tuesday: 1500 calories, Wednesday: 865 calories, Thursday:
1305 calories, Friday: 623 calories, Saturday: 1610 calories, Sunday: 1081 calories
Sometimes I wonder what that pale, miserable version of me would think of me now.
She’d probably just say what she thought about herself.
I need bigger boobs, a bigger butt, way bigger eyes. My thighs are too big, my nose is too big, my arms are too big. My jawline should be sharper, my cheekbones more defined. My eyelashes should be longer and my lips need to be bigger. Then I would be pretty.
I know what everyone says.
Beauty is more than one’s external appearance! You need to learn to love yourself! Body Positivity! Don’t indulge in society’s fatphobia! Appreciate your body because it keeps you alive! Stop starving yourself, you’ll just make it worse! Stop! Stop.
But even today, trying to appreciate how I look without achieving societal expectations is harder than achieving societal expectations. It’s too hard. Not when every person I see on social media is perfect. Is pretty. Not when every female character of every TV show I’ve ever watched has been thin and beautiful. And pretty. Not when a woman’s value in this world is almost always reduced to her appearance. She has to be pretty.
But being pretty is impossible. Skinny in some places and curvy in others. Naturally straight hair, but constantly curled and in waves. Eurocentric features with a hint of ethnic genes to enhance them. That weight on the scale, below 115 pounds, never fluctuates. We have to wear makeup, but not so much that it’s noticeable. We have to be perfect little pets: smart enough to maintain a conversation, but not enough to be intimidating. We have to know enough to intelligently answer questions about global politics, yet we are encouraged, actually expected, to prance around in ridiculous costumes while leering eyes rank us. We have these unattainable, contradictory, extensive expectations.
And isn’t it sad that meeting those expectations is all I could want? It’s all any girl could want?
“Women are born with pain built in.”
I put down my spoon and stared at my computer screen. Kristin Scott Thomas’ intent face stared back.
“It’s our physical destiny: period pains, sore boobs, childbirth, you know. We carry it within ourselves throughout our lives- men don’t. They [Men] have to seek it out. They invent all these gods and demons and things just so they can feel guilty about things, which is something we do very well on our own. And then they create wars so they can feel things and touch each other and when there aren’t any wars they can play rugby. We have it all going on in here inside, we have pain on a cycle for years and years and years and then just when you feel you are making peace with it all, what happens? The menopause comes, the fucking menopause comes, and it is the most wonderful fucking thing in the world. And yes, your entire pelvic floor crumbles and you get fucking hot and no one cares, but then you’re free, no longer a slave, no longer a machine with parts. You’re just a person.
Later that night I printed out her speech and added it to the collage on my wall above my bed.
So, maybe it’ll all get better when I’m 65, when I’m free of my period. Maybe then I’ll look in the mirror and think “I’m really pretty.” Hopefully by then I can just, I don’t know, be a person.
“So what’s happened in the news lately?” I raised my hand.
“Miss USA won the Miss Universe competition on Saturday. She had the dumbest costume.”
Irena Kang is sixteen years old, and lives in a small town in Massachusetts. She loves to read— is currently reading Slouching Towards Bethlehem, and her favorite book is The Bluest Eye. Her favorite author, as well as her biggest inspiration, is Virginia Woolf.