It was a simple question. The little girl didn’t have to think about it much.
“I want to be a princess,” she said, “A princess that gets stuck in a tower and saved with a kiss, and I want to sing too.”
The next question was a little harder, “That sounds great. I’m curious, if you were a boy, would you want to do something different?”
At this, she tilted her head. She looked around her playroom, pink splattered walls and toys of brightly colored plastic, and thought.
Her eyes lit with excitement, “I would be a police officer- or a ninja!”
*
He was sitting on his race-car bed, turning the wheel in a fast motion to avoid imaginary pedestrians and various dead animals. He made car noises for everyone in the house to hear, spitting everywhere in the process.
“Vrooom, Vroooom. I want to be a lawyer like my dad.”
“That’s a lot of work buddy, are you up for it?”
“Well sure, it was easy for him. Vrooooom”
“I’m sure you’d be a great lawyer.”
“Vroooom,” was his only reply.
“I’m curious, if you were a girl, would you want to do something different?”
He stopped driving and his face twisted into a comical expression of disgust, “I’m not a girl.”
“Well I know that, but if you were, what would you want to be when you grew up?”
“I don’t know. Wouldn’t I be the same thing?”
*
The morning light was harsh, even for a Monday. He groaned loudly, and louder when his mother yelled at him to get up, he was going to be late for school.
With reluctance, he got out of bed. It took the skill of an acrobat to climb over the various piles of dirty clothes and forgotten dishes.
He decided that he didn’t need to take a shower that morning because he practically did nothing yesterday, and a little deodorant would do the trick. Well, a little deodorant and a lot of cologne.
Pulling on a random t-shirt, he walked into the hallway towards the bathroom. The door was locked and music from some boy-band was playing inside.
“Hey, I need to piss. How long does it take to use the bathroom, three hours?”
His sister walked out and rolled her eyes. Glancing down she said, “Nice boxers, Sleeping Beauty.” They were pink.
“Whatever.” After relieving himself, the teenage boy looked in the mirror. He was scrawny and his skin was embarrassingly pale and covered with acne. He quickly brushed his teeth and combed his fingers through his short blonde hair. After finishing in the bathroom, he rushed into his bedroom, looking for a clean pair of jeans.
*
Her alarm clock was shrill. The digital numbers read seven o’clock in the morning.
Not wanting to be late, she jumped out of bed and quickly fixed her pale pink sheets. Taking a seat at her vanity, the teenager began her morning routine.
The white desk was covered in products, not the expensive products celebrities endorsed, but cheap pharmacy brands. The enormous mirror was plastered with a wallpaper of celebrity pictures. Gorgeous faces that stared back at the young girl.
She stared at the small exposed center of the mirror and hated what she saw, so she set to work. Delegating a whole half hour to this part of her morning process, she poked and prodded at her skin like a surgeon about to lose a patient. She painted her face with colors, desperately trying to create a masterpiece of layers—a finished product that could be considered beautiful.
Once she was satisfied, she walked to her closet, pushing aside the pink beads hanging from the frame, the ones she begged for last Christmas. She stared at the wall of clothes.
After trying on about six outfits that just didn’t, “feel right,” she settled on a pair of denim jeans, a small white camisole, and a lose pink belt hanging on her hips. She smiled, feeling confident and pretty. Glancing at the clock, she hastily combed her straight hair and reapplied her lip-gloss, heading downstairs for school.
“Young lady, what in the world do you think you’re wearing?”
She groaned and turned to face her mother, “Mom, it’s in style, all of my friends in school are wearing it.”
“I could care less about what your friends are wearing. Do I look like their mother? No, I’m your mother. Now go upstairs and put on a shirt with some sleeves.”
“But Mom—”
“I said go.”
With tears running down her face, the young girl ran upstairs and into her room. She ripped the beads down from the door frame and pulled a baggy sweater over her camisole. She suddenly didn’t feel pretty anymore.
