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Poetry: Body image

by Rachelle de Bretagne

Should I be judged from what I weigh or how my face fits in?
Should I be judged on shortness or the height my body measures?
Should I be ridiculed by those more fortunate, and thin?
And be judged as someone worthless, for someone else's pleasures?

Should I conform, and cut my hair the way my mother said?
Should I have skin a certain tone, or feet a certain size?
Should jokes be made that I'm too short to fit a standard bed,
Or because I have strange eyelashes that draw you to my eyes?

Should I be judged by waistline width, or length from top to toe,
Or by the cellulite that gathers on my upper thigh,
Should I be looked at in the street, or everywhere I go,
Or will someone give me credit for the fact that I still try.

Should people be a certain weight? Should people all conform,
Should people have one color or one taste in people's skin,
It's cruel when we're measured by what people see as "norm"
And it never seems to bother me the kind of skin I'm in.

Judge not the book by cover, for the pages hold much more,
That the outside body image which you judge our being on,
And it doesn't matter if you're rich or born to being poor,
It's over-rated that we judge, as one day we'll be gone.

And what they will remember when they think of me one day,
Won't be the size or color or the wrinkles on my brow,
But the memory of who I was, and in their thoughts will stay,
And to judge in any other way, won't matter anyhow.

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