Imma tell y'all something I don't really say out loud...
My whole life I was shaped like an ironing board.
No booty, no hips, no nothing, just straight up and down like somebody drew me with a ruler and forgot to finish.
"Slenderman"
"Skin and bones"
"Skinny-mini"
They all gave me a name, even that one boy in middle school who said I was built like a Black & Mild...
The whole class died laughing, and I laughed too, cause you learn real quick to laugh first so it don't look like it touched you.
But it touched me.
Every single time it touched me.
I used to stand in the mirror just turnin, side to side, side to side, kinda hoping imma catch one lil angle where something was back there.
Never was.
So I started coverin up.
Baggy clothes, hoodies in the summer, them long jackets tied round my waist like I was cold.
I wasn't cold, I just ain't want nobody seein how flat I was.
I dressed like I was tryna disappear.
And if Imma be honest with y'all, I kinda was.
I had this homegirl, love her to death, and she was thick. Hips, booty, the whole thing.
Every time walk in, the room shift for her.
Not me. Her.
That same barista that be dry with me gone light all the way up when she step to the counter.
Men comin to buy us drinks but me and y'all both know who that drink was really for.
They'd say two words to me just to get a lane to her. And Imma be standin right there.
Right there.
Like furniture nobody planned on sittin in.
And here go the part that cut the deepest.
It was always our own men.
Not strangers.
Black men, the ones I grew up round, the ones I actually wanted to notice me, lookin straight through me to get to the girl with the shape.
Like I wasn't even on the menu.
Like I ain't register as a woman at all.
I'm cute. Pretty face, good skin, funny as hell. But none of that counted for nothing.
In our culture curves is currency, and baby I was dead broke...
So after a while I stopped expectin to get picked. For nothing.
I told myself it was just genetics.
My sister thick, my mama thick, and somehow God just skipped me.
But I ain't fully give up tho. Not yet.
Cause somewhere in me was still that lil girl turnin in the mirror, hopin.
So before I let surgery be my only answer, I told myself Imma try everything first.
Everything.
And baby... I meant everything.