| expectations of summer: | going to the beach every day, water fights, parties, random day trips, barbecues |
| reality of summer: | moving your laptop so that the sunlight doesn't reflect on the screen when you're trying to blog |
(Source: raythecreator)
(Source: cinderela-ao-avesso)
—
you will get your period one day,
and you will not feel like a woman.
you will feel like your body has betrayedevery promise it ever curled around
your little finger. this is normal.
you will get breasts soon afteror before—it’s different for everyone,
and you will still not feel like a woman.
you will wonder why they don’t looklike your mother’s, or anyone else’s, and if
you hate them for it. you will come across
someone someday and ache for them to crawlinside your body. wait. you are not
a woman yet, even though you might
feel like it now, sometimes. even thoughall of the boys in your grade get to be called
“young men.” you will have hips one day.
they are carriages for tomorrow’s generation. they tell youyour responsibility is not to yourself but to the child
blossoming like a gift. they will tell you you will have
a child. they will tell you it will be a gift. you will betold so much. you will be told how to dress for your
body type, how to be gentle in sports and sex, how to hide
a whole castle in your delicate heart and never show anyone,how to use the word “discreet” and apply it to
all of your bodily functions, how to conceal tampons
in your sleeves, how to yank at your hair until it lies flat,and how to preen the slime of your father’s disgust
with your growing body out of each of your feathers. but
no one will tell you where your clitoris isor that masturbation is not just for boys. or that
porn isn’t always what real sex is like, and that you
are actually allowed to fall in love with the folds in yourstomach that happen when you sit down.
you will have to research the word “autonomy”
by yourself. you will have to learn to love yourselfalone. you will hide your sexuality like a tooth
under your pillow until you can stop being
embarrassed about the way it was pulled from your mouth.you will never forget the iron taste of those pliers.
this is all normal.
“I’ll never forget the day Marilyn and I were walking around New York City, just having a stroll on a nice day. She loved New York because no one bothered her there like they did in Hollywood, she could put on her plain-jane clothes and no one would notice her. She loved that. So as we we’re walking down Broadway, she turns to me and says ‘Do you want to see me become her?’ I didn’t know what she meant but I just said ‘Yes’- and then I saw it. I don’t know how to explain what she did because it was so very subtle, but she turned something on within herself that was almost like magic. And suddenly cars were slowing and people were turning their heads and stopping to stare. They were recognizing that this was Marilyn Monroe as if she pulled off a mask or something, even though a second ago nobody noticed her. I had never seen anything like it before.” - Amy Greene, wife of Marilyn’s personal photographer Milton Greene




