The Poster Girl -Who Is She?

The Poster Girl -Who Is She?

Maria is a very plain-looking girl. Her best friend, Anna is the homecoming queen. Talk about opposite attracts. They went everywhere, do everything together. They are practically joined in the hips. Here’s my own conclusion what draws them together. Anna comes from a broken family and has a very low self-esteem. She is drawn to Maria right from the very first day she transferred to Maryfield College because Maria is smart, friendly and confident. Maria, on the other hand, is drawn to Anna because she admires her mesmerizing beauty; the one thing she lacks greatly.

A brief description on Maria’s physical appearance; Average-build, pimply, patchy olive complexion, bad skinned, lots of mossie bite scars on her too-skinny, pale, gawky legs. She always wears long pants to cover the hideous scars on her legs. Her hair is extremely fine and limp with many obvious receding hairlines in sight. And to top It off, she wears thick glasses and braces. Go visualize.

Hanging out together certainly work wonders for Anna. She blossomed into a self-confident and charismatic lady, and slowly many boys began to show interest in her. At that period of time, it happens that there was a Ms. Singapore beauty pageant taking place. Many of her college mates encourage her to participate. Without much probing, she entered and emerged a winner. Since then, she was a changed girl. She transformed into an arrogant, conceited lady, so full of herself and extremely vain. She finds her college mates and Anna too plain and boring, and instead, chooses to hang out with her new friends; other contestants and judges from the pageant. Beautiful and powerful people, someone who is somebody in the community, are her new group of friends.

As for Maria, she felt so betrayed and sunk into depression as a consequence of Anna’s desertion. She too, began a transformation, from good to bad unfortunately; the once happy, bubbly personality has now become someone who is obsessive about changing her looks and started isolating herself from everyone. She is determined to become as beautiful as Anna. She too, wants to live the glamorous life like Anna.

She starts by going to the gym everyday, toning up her body and splashes all her money on all kinds of beauty and skincare products, she watches her diet like a hawk, eating only the ‘right kind of food’, and lots of fruits and veggie diet. She wasn’t fat to begin with, so losing weight is not her main concern. It is more about clearing and cleansing of her bad skin and blotchy, stale complexion. After 12 months of self-imposed exile drilling on this obsessive military ‘self-transformation’ regime; she emerged from her cocoon, changing from a caterpillar to a gorgeous butterfly. Her skin glows and her body well-defined, toned and rock hard and her hair seems to gain more volume, so glossy and healthy looking. With a touch of make-up and slipping into a silky, little black dress, she looks like a winner! Absolutely radiant, Superbly stunning!

Lots of people find it hard to believe that one could transform so drastically. That is what you call Will-Power, and its ability to produce miracle results. She engrossed herself reading many motivational books, self-hypnosis and mental visualization to achieve her goals. She would cut out pictures of beautiful women, pictures of models and actresses from magazines and paste it on the wall in her bedroom, and spends most of her time using mental visualization to ‘connect’ with these images. She wants to look as good as them. Amongst her many pictures pasted all over her bedroom wall, there is one huge poster of a model. It is just a portrait shot. She is wearing an ordinary round collar black t-shirt, she has a centre parted, long, straight, jet black hair (with a bit of purple tint).She has a perfect asymmetrical features and a killer smile. This poster is the first and the last thing Maria sees going and waking up from bed every day.

Before you know it, days, weeks and then months passes by that Maria has been living in her own little own. She is so obsessed with the Poster Girl. She grows her hair long and have it tinted like hers. She put on make-up the same way as her, smile the same sexy lopside smile like her. Sometimes she would just sit in front of the poster and stare at her. She swears she is telepathically connecting with her. She gets a lot of encouragement from the Poster Girl, she would sometimes hear her in the head saying things like, ‘You go girl. You are beautiful now, now all you need to do is just trim your brows this way, dress that way, etc.. It was as though her grooming and dressing is guided by the Poster Girl.

Over the passing time, she received many compliments from her college mates such as ‘Maria, you look really beautiful, you look different’ and it always accompanies with a puzzling, ‘cant put a finger on it and scratching their head’ kind of look. Even Maria is sometimes shocked herself as she began to see the transformation of her look to resemble so much of the Poster Girl. Her features is even changing, it became more soft and feminine, the shape of her eyes, and other very subtle definition on her face, or even moles which she doesn’t have start appearing on the same spot like those of the Poster Girl’s. She started feeling a bit uneasy of the whole thing and questions such as ‘Who is this Poster Girl, where is she from, what does she do, is she someone who is still alive or dead?, and so many other questions start flashing through her mind. It then dawn to her that she knows absolutely nothing about this girl at all.

One day, some of her college mates came over to her house to do school assignments, they went into the bedroom, saw the poster and stopped short. ‘Wow Maria!, they said. ‘When did you take this photo and blow it up into a Poster? You look stunning!’ ‘Which professional photo studio was this taken?’ ‘Gee thanks guys, but that’s not me’, Maria said, slightly embarrassed as she is still not used to getting compliments. ‘It’s a poster I tore out from some magazine. They did a double take and shake their heads in disbelief! ‘It cant be! She looks EXACTLY like you!, they exclaimed.

Then one night something happened that completely creeps the hell out of Maria. Her room has dark, heavy curtains which is always drawn at night, it is impossible to have any lights from the streets penetrating through it. She likes her room to be in complete darkness when she sleeps. But on that night, she couldn’t sleep peacefully. She feels restless and was tossing and turning. She just couldn’t shake this feeling that someone or something is staring hard at her. Suddenly, she opens her eyes, the first thing she saw is the Poster. She saw luminous, white light piercing from the eyes of the Poster Girl, like a set of glittering diamonds! Her heart started pounding hard! She thought she is dreaming, she rubs her eyes and reopens once again and it was still there! She grew REALLY frightened by now. For some reason, her body is all icy cold and paralyzed; she just couldn’t move. She shuts her eyes and covered her face with her blanket. After a few minutes, she peeps from her blanket and again she saw those piercing eyes AND this time, the hair of the Poster Girl is moving, as though it is blown by wind! The Poster Girl looks 3-dimensional, it is as though it is coming right out of the poster! That does it! Maria fainted on the spot and only woke up at noon the next day. The first thing she did was jumped out of bed and tore the poster off and chuck it in the bin!

She realized now that her obsession and fixation with this Poster Girl has somehow brought ‘life’ to it. It has somewhat opened the gate to the unknown world /dimension. She knows better than to tinkle with something out of the twilight zone. That incident really gave her a hard slap back to reality! Till this day, this Poster Girl still remains a mystery to her. Who is She?