PROMPT: “The Hobbit” episode of South Park is ultimately about the giving up of integrity and self-image for the perceived worth of public beauty. It’s the idea that image has more substance than self. And the sadness at the end when Wendy tearfully gives in to the pressures of society and sacrifices her self-worth to be like the other girls. It’s poignant.
FILL: As a girl she was confident and smart and believed that she could do anything. But somewhere along the road to adulthood she lost that belief in herself. The people around her chipped away at it with their words and their expressions until she found herself changing, growing smaller, compacting inward.
There are times when she fears she will implode. Too many words aimed too sharply and her internalization will see her fold in and disappear. She will be gone, and the stranger walking around in her skin will be the woman they’ve made her into: shallow empty shell with hollow eyes and a soulless smile, desperation oozing from every pore. “What can I do to please you, master?”
It sickened her as much as it made her afraid. How much of herself could be carved way until nothing of substance was left? It was probably too little and too late to wonder.
The confident happy-go-lucky girl she used to be was gone. She’d taken her pony dolls and lasso of truth and disappeared somewhere too narrow for a woman to foll.
This is what growing up does to people, she thought. We become the mold we’re forced into. Images become reality, and reality becomes shaded with lies powered by greed and self-indulgence.
We are the Cube.
[IMAGE: the puzzle from “Hellraiser shifting and turning through empty space. Close up, each block is a room full of danger. People struggle fruitlessly to escape, each one representing an aspect of a personality: intelligence, aggression, compassion, self-awareness, despair, and delusion.
The people battle their way through to find the exit. The weak and unable to adapt perish, unaware that the traps are the obvious danger, while the thing that really kills them is their own fear and desperation.
A single survivor makes it through the shining door. To live, to die, who knows. It is an open-ended possibility.
Expanded outward, past the cube and it’s sliding, changing state. Past the writing on the walls and the edges of fingers working the puzzle. Farther and farther, until light.
Outward through an eye and expanded to focus on a room. And in that room sits you.
We are the Cube. We are the evil trapped within, and the hope left shimmering at the bottom of the box. Trapped, waiting, willing a pair of idle hands to find us.]
She flopped back on her bed, staring — shocked — at the ceiling.
“I don’t want to do this,” she said. Her voice sounded scratchy and strange. But she listened.
She didn’t want to be the perfect little girl anymore.
She didn’t want to be anyone’s baby.
At the end of the day, she wanted to be loved. So like sweet pig-nosed Penelope, she would learn that she had value and self-worth. If no one else would love her the way that she deserved, she would love herself.
Whether she sent herself flowers or wrote herself uplifting notes, she treated herself with a kindness she never had before.
And suddenly those hurtful glances didn’t matter quite so much. That loudmouthed boy was an inconsequential ant (though secretly she feared he might be the next Hitler). She still hung out with her friends, but she could already feel herself slipping away from small town life.
She was ready to leave high school behind and go to college. She was counting down the years, months, and days until she could finally move into a small apartment and live FREE.
She thought about different things: Shaving her head. Having sex with a variety of people. Fucking herself on her bed or all across her apartment and being as loud as she wanted. Walking around naked and feeling sexy as she freely looked at herself.
Being at home meant there was never any privacy. There was always someone waiting to listen outside her door and call out “You alive in there?” right when she was on the brink of orgasm.
She could barely wait until she had a place of her own.
Somewhere where she could lock the door and not have to fear that those boys were filming her. (She still ached over the loss of innocence when she’d realized his friends had installed cameras in her playhouse. That had been her private place and they’d STOLEN it from her. And she feared that he’d helped.) She wanted somewhere where she could feel safe and be alone.
And so, in her bedroom where that shattering image had briefly overtaken her mind, she changed herself. Bit by bit, she shaped herself into the person she wanted to be.
She made sure to do the best work she could do in school. She received the award for Second Best Grades in her junior high graduating class.
She entered high school with the expectation that she would do well.