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My skin is mine. MY-INE. She wants it, I know she does. It doesn't fit
her though. It was bad enough the day she stole my hair.
The day she stole my hair.
The day she stole my hair I cried. I cried for her, and I cried for
me. When I was 14 I used to baby sit. I didn't like the child, but her
Dad used to buy me ciggies and they had Sky TV. One day we were
playing, I was trying to read her Roald Dahl, silly little creature
didn't understand how wonderful he is, she wanted to play with Barbie.
They weren't real Barbies, Barbies from the market, but she didn't
know. "Look, look Jenna. It's yooou." It's me? Me. A Barbie. I was 14,
I had no breasts, no hips, my eyes were coated in black and purple
eye-shadow, and I thought I was hot with my nose ring and five studs
in each ear. I was no Barbie. I thought she was a stupid child. I
didn't realise children are more perceptive than they first seem; I
was a stupid child myself.
And then I looked.
Slowly I placed my copy of The Witches on the table and slid down
beside her. The fake Barbie's hair was the same colour as mine. The
child handed it to me, I gazed down at the plastic girl with a vacant
smile, her hair, she was wearing my hair! This little plastic THING
was wearing my hair. I unknotted the mass of auburn velvet that I was
so proud of, for it was me, and only me who had THIS hair. THIS hair,
MY hair fell around my skinny shoulders, coating the synthetic,
plastic hair. There was no difference. I was stunned.
"You're pretty like Barbie."
I decided it was the child's bedtime. And then I sat and cried.
I stole the Barbie. I never babysat again. And I dyed my hair black
the next day.
I was over that, the years changed, my hair changed, it was a long
time before I was auburn velvet again. I was pink and blue and red and
green. I was cut, I grew. The roots turned coal into velvet. The
Barbie was given to Oxfam. The nose hole shrunk along with my
eye-liner, and my breasts grew a little whilst my hips grew a lot. The
trauma of my defining feature was locked in away in my repressed
memory accompanied by my Nirvana T-Shirts and angsty poetry where I
practiced being Sylvia Plath. Until now. Until her.
(c) Jenna Mitchell
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