Mela

Samina Parveen is a teen spoken-word poet from India. Below is one of her poems on body shaming.

Midnight eyes mirror the truth,
Dusky brown skin echoes the bitterness
Echos reciprocate the four walls
Adjectives accustomed to the hearing eardrum
Fat, large, obese, big, thick.
eyes drenched in saline droplets
The blurry eye looked towards the hip line

Stomach growled like an acidic monster
Calming the hunger, I gasped in the smell of water
That feeling of having water on an empty stomach
Trying to suppress my hunger
For a perfect body?
Torturing myself to get that
Hourglass shape

Rage quickened my blood
Throwing away those pills, supplements
Moving away from the Scale weight
I stared at the mirror
And my body
Why do I torture it?
To look pretty?
Gazing at midnight eye I mirrored the truth
I want to beautiful, not pretty

Below you can also find her two spoken-word poems. (Both provide closed captions.)