Little girls are exclamation marks:
Me! Trees! Legs! Family! Sunlight! Stomach! Ice cream! Happy! Me!
Until they learn…”Beautiful”, “ugly”, “thin”, “fat”,
And then girls become question marks…
Beautiful enough? Thin enough? Sexy enough? Enough? Enough? Enough?
The question becomes a hunger, a feAR, a TERROR of “no”,
And soon we stop finishing our own sentences because
Half-existence is better than “no” existence.
And what would it take to let us find our exclamation marks again?
If you liked this post, you might like these ones, too:
Her Body
You are not an apology
Ophelia Awakes
Published by shellypruittjohnson
My name is Shelly Johnson, and I am a writer and philosopher with a Ph.D. in philosophy. One of my primary personal and philosophical interests is how we can learn to love ourselves and each other better in order to cultivate personal and political resilience. I teach ethics and a variety of other courses at a local college. I am the author of the blog Love is Stronger. I am also the author of three logic and critical thinking books for high school and middle school: _Argument Builder_, _Discovery of Deduction_ (co-author), and _Everyday Debate_, published by Classical Academic Press. You can reach me at shellypruittjohnson@gmail.com.
View all posts by shellypruittjohnson
Amazing insight. Let’s become exclamation marks again. Much better posture.
Yes! Let’s do it! Thank you so much, Friend.
🙁 It makes me so sad all the pressure put on people to look a certain way. Let’s totally straighten out those question marks into exclamation points!
Absolutely! It makes me sad, too.
Oh you said this so amazingly and beautifully! Feels true.
Thank you so much, P! I am so glad it feels true. It felt true to me, too.
You are most welcome Shelly.