Dear teenage girls,

Dear girls 14-20 years old,
do you hate me
even more than
the mirror in the morning?
do you glare me down
even more than
you do your own friends?
Let me tell you
that you can kick
and you can scream,
or hide behind
your money
and the flaws of others,
but you will never win
this self-inflicted siege
that is crashing down
on the youth
of this world.
But you can't
just give in either.
Because if you stop
fighting to end this,
then nobody will be more
than the price of their makeup.
So the next time
that you give into
the power of self-flagellation
that wages war on only
yourself,
remember these words
that I speak to you:
Hair-straighteners
and eye-dying contacts
will not earn you
your satisfactory.
Drop the show
of being effortlessly
perfect and golden.
It will only lead to
crumbling.
Stop turning a grain
of sand
into an ocean of emotion.
People don’t mind being
a shoulder for your tears
until they’re just a stain
on your gallery of prideful
pity sobs.
Don’t be the reason
that young girls
pump themselves
full of plastic
and distort their gifted
bodies into cracking, clay deformities.
And don’t be the one
who does either.
Being fake means
that you are not real.
It means you have no
value.
And that’s all we really want:
value.
So stop!
For throwing up
your food
will only lead you
to purging your personality.
Instead, fill up
your empty perfume bottles
with encouraging passages
of love unbroken.
Only then can
we can learn
to make time
And with that time
we fix the mess
that we have made.
And then we can learn
to love eachother again.