Need to Be

I look at the cover of the magazine and look in the mirror.
         I need to be pretty.  I have to look exactly like the cover girl or else I’m a waste of space.  If I don’t get my eyebrows at the exact right angle I’ll die apparently or worse, I’ll be considered weird.
         Out of all the magazines in the store I had to choose this one.  This one has a quiz which will tell me if I’m a ‘wet blanket’ or a ‘life of the party’.  If I don’t find out, where will my social life go?  Out the window that’s where. 
         Flip.  Flip.  Flip.  I turn each and every glossy page looking at their perfect faces and bodies.  By the time I’m done I’ve concluded several things:
         -My legs are far too long. 
         -My arms definitely need to be toned up and a bit more tan.
         -Brown is the color of poop and I definitely shouldn’t have brown hair.
         -My eyes are weird.
         -I need to smoke.  If I smoke, I’ll be cool.
         In general I conclude that if I don’t want to be shunned for being an abnormality I should go get plastic surgery quick.  That way my life will be perfect, just like the models.  I won’t be in debt, my parents won’t be divorced, my brother will still be living with us, and everything will be perfect.
         As I sit in my room and fantasize about my futuristic perfect life and body my Mother comes into the room carrying a gigantic pink book with balloons on it.  I recognize the beautiful sewed on balloons and décor on it; it’s the family album.
         “You wanna look at it with me?”  My Mom asks as she sits on the bed next to me making the perfectly smooth bedspread wrinkle.  I don’t mind though.
         “Sure.”  I close the smooth pages and trade in for brittle old photographs of my family and I.  Sitting closely to my Mother I can smell the perfume she’s been wearing since I was five.  I can see how her hair is slowly turning gray with age and how her eyes are weird, just like mine.  Yet, she’s so happy.
         “Look at this one!”  My attention is drawn to a bunch of  pictures in the corner of the book.  “You were in love with your body back then!”
         I glimpse through them.  There’s one with me curling my brown hair into a pile,  putting on a bunch of ugly green makeup, showing off my long legs, and one I’m posing with barely anything on. 
         In every single one I have a gigantic confident grin on my face.  Each smile is genuine, simple and purely happy.  Eagerly I flick through more photographs of myself getting older with each page as if my life was on fast forward.
         Yet, by the end of it, the person in the photographs isn’t me.  They’re a phony cut out of a wannabe confident person.  Me hiding my legs, me perfecting my hair, and me wearing layers and layers of clothes.  In every photograph I’m not smiling, I’m frowning with concern on if this photograph was going to be taken well.
         Ding!  The oven timer from the kitchen goes off and my mother bustles out of the room in a flurry taking the photo album with her.  Without noticing a small photograph flutters to the floor of my room, landing like a snowflake on the ground.
         I walk towards it like a frightened animal about to pounce on something potentially dangerous.  It’s the photograph of me posing at 6 years old.  I’m wearing a tiny bikini that’s printed with ugly flowers.  I can remember a little part of me saying that it was cute.  My hair falls in lumpy curls around my shoulders like smoldering ashes.  Another little voice says that’s beautiful.  Finally I see my long legs and arms proudly held into a pose and my face contorted into a real smile.  It is cute.
         Quickly I pick up a tack and replace my Gwen Stefani poster with this tiny photograph.  For a few minutes I stare at it, examine it and memorize it as my new role model.
         A soft clunk at my side makes me jump.  The slippery magazine slides down onto the base of my back.  I pick it up and stare at it.
         The glossy cover girl suddenly doesn’t look so fabulous.  Her smiles so fake and not really that self confident.  The angle her head is at looks so painful and when I look into her eyes I see fear.  The same fear I had seen in the most recent photos of myself.  The fear of not looking good.
         Clunk.  I flop open to the middle section of the magazine.  It blares out in overly dramatic letters ‘Get A Perfect Body!’.  A picture of a girl in a slim outfit looks back out at me.  So phony, so unreal. 
         I look in the mirror, then at the girl.  Suddenly, my eyes don’t seem so weird anymore.  They look strangely unique.  My hair isn’t the color of poop, it’s the color of hazel coffee, the kind Great Grandma used to drink. 
         Tossing the magazine into the trash can I walk over to my drawers and take out my favorite piece of clothing and put it on.  So what if the flowers aren’t matched and the pants are a bit too baggy? 
         I don’t want to be ‘perfect’ anymore.  I like being imperfect actually.  Suddenly the brownies coming out of the oven don’t seem like little monsters ready to make me out of shape.  They seem like little pieces of heaven.
         “Hey mom, can I lick the batter?!”  I’m out the door in a flash.