I Am an Emotional Creature: The Secret Life of Girls Around the World by Eve Ensler Read Free Book Online Page A

beginning and then when they get older they turn on her.
    They cut off all her hair or even her head or put her in the microwave oven.
    The people who are in charge make her say really stupid things. They put words in her mouth:
    Will we ever have enough clothes?
I want to go shopping.
Math is hard
.
    I know Barbie doesn’t really want to say any of this ’cause I know what’s going on in her head. She talks to me. She’s really angry. She’s really hurting. She is really guilty. She hates shopping and feels bad about all the girls who are starved to make her and are starving to be like her. She’s actually very messy and surprisingly loud. She is not at all polite and she hates being shoved into really tight clothes and pointy high uncomfortable shoes.
    Barbie isn’t who you think she is. She’s so much smarter than they will let her be. She’s got great powers and is kind of a genius.
    There are more than a billion Barbies in the world. Imagine if we freed them. Imagine if they came alive in all the villages and cities and bedrooms and landfills and dream houses. Imagine if they went from makeover to takeover. Imagine if they started saying what they really felt.
       Let Barbie speak.
    Head Send:
Free Barbie!

Head Send:
Free Barbie!
Free Barbie!
Free Barbie!
       Ow! I just got my hand caught! It hurts. It’s bleeding. They are going to be very angry.
    Head Send:
Free Chang Ying!

Head Send:
Free Chang Ying!

Let her out of this dirty sweaty factory
.
Head Send:
Please
.

SKY SKY SKY
Ramallah, Palestine
    Dear Khalid,
I keep touching my hair
A kind of pastime
Running through
Running through.
It was thicker before.
Now it is water.
Something has left me.
I am not sure what it is.
    Dear Khalid,
When I stood by your grave
I imagined them assembling
the pieces of your body like a puzzle.
Always this missing piece
and your hand
I kept thinking about your hand
gripping mine when you believed
in something enough
to die.
You would get excited.
Not happy excited like receiving a present.
More like determined.
No one was going to take your future away from you.
I kept thinking about the pieces
of your body
and how I loved each piece
but never separated before like this.
    Dear Khalid,
Later I realized it began as a fever, the rage.
Two weeks after they threw the dirt on you
and gave me the scarf you wore for good luck.
I thought it was one of those illnesses
that we get from the bad water
from the lack of light
when there is no bread
when there is no baby’s milk
when everything gets shut down and off
when we are forced into one broken room for weeks,
months sometimes.
I thought it was an illness.
I was burning and I could not stop.
I wrapped myself in the fabric of your scarf
in your smell
thinking it would hold me in
or keep things out
but it didn’t.
    Dear Khalid,
It was simple
the voice
when it came to me
so perfect, so clear:
Suicide bomber
.
I said it out loud
in front of my friends
in the café
and the fever finally broke.
    Dear Khalid,
They told me not to think about it.
They told me I’d be a hero.
They told me I’d join you in paradise.
They spoke too quickly.
They moved too fast.
I needed to take time.
There was a boy who would go with me.
I could tell he was afraid.
He was sweating.
He had acne.
Someone or something had sent him there
and like me he was trying to catch up.
    Dear Khalid,
Maybe if they had sent a car that had lights
or a car that wasn’t broken or rusty.
Maybe if they hadn’t rushed me so fast.
Maybe if they had let me dress like myself
but the idea of dying
in a tank top with my belly exposed
the idea of dying in their jeans
the way they were rough and squeezed me in …
    Dear Khalid,
It could have been your baby
I was carrying against my skin
strapped on like that
sucking life out of me
but it was a bomb
the size of a torso
extending now, like an overgrown tumor
sucking the life
there could have been
little fingers instead of nails
something
we created out of tenderness
but it was