There are times when you come across writing that touches something deep inside of you. One of my favorite things in the entire world is when that writing happens to be a student's piece. It feels more real when it comes from one of the young adults who sits in my class. It feels more personal.
The assignment was to create a written work that was inspired by Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter. My students were given 10 options in which to execute this assignment; they only had to choose one. The 10 options varied...they could write a eulogy for one of the characters, predict the future of another character, write poetry based on the themes found within the novel, etc. One of the more popular options was to create a story based on the concept of slut shaming. Essentially, that is what the main character of The Scarlet Letter went through (in an entirely puritan way, of course). The purpose of this particular option was for the students to make connections to 21st century judgement and the judgment cast upon the people of Colonial America. Gabi did a fantastic job. Check it out...
Look Forward
Look
to your left.
See
a girl; see someone, and see no one. See collars that are pulled up too high on
her chest for whoever's liking and see dresses that to her are proper and to
anyone else are prude. See modesty mistaken for an excuse for misogyny and do
not turn your eye when boys push her around, take her conservative lengths as
challenges instead of choices. She is reprimanded for owning herself, for her
decision to never owe anyone anything back, to never give neither sole nor her
body. Half the people she knows rap gold medals so tightly around her neck for
saving her virtue that she hangs herself with them every night after the other
half taunt her for it. She is all t-shirts and disinterest with sex for how
often it is thrown in her face. When people watch her it is not for her
humanity; she is observed as a trophy, something to be broken and taken, a halo
to smash in the name of God’s instructions. By social definition, she is a
prude and therefor a subordinate and if her spine ever dares to straighten back
up in an effort to look those in the eye who patronize her there will always be
someone waiting to snap her back into submission because after all she is but a
child yet to be whipped and bled and dragged screaming and kicking into
womanhood. Her whole life is a mess of disappointment and commendations, going
from being thrown down on a bed to having a chastity belt secured around her
narrow waist by hands she never said could touch her to having the key thrown
down a well that she can not see the bottom of and being told that one day when
she finds the right boy he will find it for her but she knows that even then
she still will not get it back at her asking only his wanting. People watch her
and her high collars and wide eyes, and they see a fetish, a cherry popper
hallmark and a conquest waiting to happen. Her neck is sore from being
strangled; her wrists ache from being cuffed and pulled side to side, label to
label, bad to no better, and if she could she would rip her own hands away and
simply gift them to both sides. She would lend her heart to her mother and her
lungs to the boy that used to take her breath away and her feet to every punter
as a peace offering to say that she has decided to stop running and her
shoulder blades to every person who has ever treated her to be some sort of
angel for the of lack what she has let in between her legs so they would know
she is just a girl, nothing more and nothing less, with no wings to be found.
In her goodbye letter she will let them know that the ones they stole off a
dead swan and taped to her back never really suited her anyways, that she took
them off a long time ago and now she is just breathing through the fall. She hopes
that in the end they learn that you cannot make someone a dove by feeding her
less and tying her hands behind her back so she cannot have much of a choice.
She will always have a choice; even when no one bothers to ask she will still
grit her teeth, look everyone who has ever looked down on her in the eye, and she
will say, “No.”
Look
to your Right.
See a girl; see someone, and see no one. See low cut blouses and skirts that are too short and yet not short enough for everyone’s liking but her own; see crop tops and booty shorts and behold before you the modern virgin harlot. To all the people she does not owe an explanation to she is a warm body with a cold heart. When she talks of not wanting children she feels a vacuum in her lungs as seemingly every mother on the planet gasps in horror. The girl laughs when the ladies think they are being quiet enough in their remarks of how on the track she is going on, she will end up with them anyways. If she cared to explain herself, if she cared what they thought, she would dwell on all the things they do not see. They do not know that she has never widened her knees without thought, that every time she trades a part of herself to someone else she gets pieces back. She is not lacking; she is still whole. They do not know that the only time her thighs are not pressed side by side in an answer in and of itself, is as she saunters past viscous pairs of eyes not worth her looking back as they are too busy looking at her literal assets. Sometimes though, those eyes follow her along with hands and catcalls and things she never asked for. She is in a unceasing struggle of letting her femininity wander freely as it should be able to and trying to protect it from those who desire to brand their own name into it’s hide. Her nights are warped into a dangerous game of alertness and care over details that should never have to matter but do anyways because juries still ask questions she might need to answer. No matter how hard she tries people still will not let her body be her own, her life constantly a game of how much faster can someone get her on her back then the last one who had her. She loves herself and she is proud of her sexuality, of her seduction and confidence, but she is terrified because it feels as though she is being asked to give and give all the time but what she gets back is a mere gift, a token for pity like she is some sort of lost puppy who really only has one good use before she is thrown back onto the streets again. She fears for if one day someone tears her apart and she fears for if she ever lets him. If a boy pins her down in an alleyway and she cannot seem to make loud enough of a sound is she even real, was she ever even here if no one believes her? Perhaps, she is the demon that everyone pins her to be, fallen from the angel they called her before she decided her choices could be both out of spite and desire. When she takes the first step into a world girls are supposed to be carried into drugged and dragging their feet with clouded, unknowing consciousness, she opens up the doors to heaven and cracks open a worldly hell and she names herself princess of everything that has ever refused to do things anyway but their own. If anyone ever cared to really look, even with her crown they would know she is but a girl. She refuses to be a conquest or a notch in a totem pole from another century no matter how harshly she is shoved onto her knees. No matter who pushes her, she will always stand back up, push back, pull towards her, tear apart, bite and mark and hiss by her own consensus a, “Yes.”
See a girl; see someone, and see no one. See low cut blouses and skirts that are too short and yet not short enough for everyone’s liking but her own; see crop tops and booty shorts and behold before you the modern virgin harlot. To all the people she does not owe an explanation to she is a warm body with a cold heart. When she talks of not wanting children she feels a vacuum in her lungs as seemingly every mother on the planet gasps in horror. The girl laughs when the ladies think they are being quiet enough in their remarks of how on the track she is going on, she will end up with them anyways. If she cared to explain herself, if she cared what they thought, she would dwell on all the things they do not see. They do not know that she has never widened her knees without thought, that every time she trades a part of herself to someone else she gets pieces back. She is not lacking; she is still whole. They do not know that the only time her thighs are not pressed side by side in an answer in and of itself, is as she saunters past viscous pairs of eyes not worth her looking back as they are too busy looking at her literal assets. Sometimes though, those eyes follow her along with hands and catcalls and things she never asked for. She is in a unceasing struggle of letting her femininity wander freely as it should be able to and trying to protect it from those who desire to brand their own name into it’s hide. Her nights are warped into a dangerous game of alertness and care over details that should never have to matter but do anyways because juries still ask questions she might need to answer. No matter how hard she tries people still will not let her body be her own, her life constantly a game of how much faster can someone get her on her back then the last one who had her. She loves herself and she is proud of her sexuality, of her seduction and confidence, but she is terrified because it feels as though she is being asked to give and give all the time but what she gets back is a mere gift, a token for pity like she is some sort of lost puppy who really only has one good use before she is thrown back onto the streets again. She fears for if one day someone tears her apart and she fears for if she ever lets him. If a boy pins her down in an alleyway and she cannot seem to make loud enough of a sound is she even real, was she ever even here if no one believes her? Perhaps, she is the demon that everyone pins her to be, fallen from the angel they called her before she decided her choices could be both out of spite and desire. When she takes the first step into a world girls are supposed to be carried into drugged and dragging their feet with clouded, unknowing consciousness, she opens up the doors to heaven and cracks open a worldly hell and she names herself princess of everything that has ever refused to do things anyway but their own. If anyone ever cared to really look, even with her crown they would know she is but a girl. She refuses to be a conquest or a notch in a totem pole from another century no matter how harshly she is shoved onto her knees. No matter who pushes her, she will always stand back up, push back, pull towards her, tear apart, bite and mark and hiss by her own consensus a, “Yes.”
Gabi Smith, everybody!!!!!! So proud of her and her immense abilities!
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