Dear Kimberly Henry - A Slam Poem About Plastic Surgery

I wrote this in response to a plastic surgery ad I saw in the menu at a restaurant in California. It was this picture of a human barbie doll who's name was apparently Kimberly Henry, and it said "indulge yourself". The next day, on an airplane, I wrote this.

Sorry for the awful delay in the video.

If you want to contact me, you can email me at purple.kina@gmail.com, or message me on my tumblr, capulakina.tumblr.com

These are the words:
Dear Kimberly Henry, I saw your ad last night.
The menu at the cheesecake factory --
your smile so bright on the page next to the page
with the weight management salads.
So people have to know the calories of every order,
or they might accidentally indulge themselves in flavor,
and that's not right?
Because your ad says I should indulge myself under the knife. Because something about me is so broken and wrong? That I have to listen to every line of your song?
And follow every rule of your game?
Go on a diet?
Change my name?
Or go insane at my own reflection, or the scale?
Start calling myself an ugly pig cow whale?
Or remember I'm human, that's all I can be.
And my humanity is more beautiful than any sad plastic dream.
No, cuz if I let myself get happy, I might get fat.
Which I guess is even worse than being empty and needing?
Or on a table cut open and bleeding?
Or obsessing over numbers, or hiding behind clothes?
Or really believing there's no way I'll glow
unless change this, lose this, cut this, change that? You know what?
I'd rather be fat.
I'd rather be really fat, not just a pinch of some skin.
I'd rather remember that food isn't sin, because fat's just a word like blonde haired, or brown eyed. And when's the last time somebody starved themselves until they died, because their eyes weren't blue, even though they tried? And you know what?
The things you tell yourself are lies.
And they aren't your lies.
You aren't that creative.
You aren't the first one infatuated with self hatred.
You're just part of the chain on a rusty old bike,
and you've been pushed into the ground all of your life. Because it's so accepted? So wide spread and celebrated. That skinny is happy and fat is wrong?
It's written all over magazines and billboards and love songs and in me and in fucking everybody, so I wonder, Kimberly.
What happened to you?
That you risked your own life attempting to be beautiful? And you tell other girls that's what they should do?
And you reap love and peace like the grimmest reality,
and when I'm trying to eat you're all over my menu? Kimberly Henry, fuck you.
How dare you tell girls that plastic surgery is fun?
That they have to char their skin under a fake sun, and put plastic in their chest to be any fun, to laugh and to tease and weight and reweigh
and spend day after day
spreading more bullshit and causing more pain?
For the sake of their makeup, staying out of the rain.
More terrified to gain a pound t
han their health and dreams hitting the ground,
shattered by this cloud of despair
that's infecting people everywhere,
so you can find little girls who only care
about skipping lunch, and they don't even know, that in some reality, this isn't acceptable.
To scream at women all day and all night, how is it any better than when when women didn't have any rights? Because yeah I can vote,
and get a job,
but I have to shave my legs, get a tan, go on a fast, get a man, lose the weight as fast as I can, boast, compare, cry, lie, and die?
Fuck yeah I can vote, and I can also fly
away from this whole sea of toxic muck.
Because I don't really give a fuck what you say, and if you think I should have a problem with that?
No thanks, I'd rather be fat.