Katie Makkai - Pretty

Katie Makkai, a veteran poetry slammer - defining the word "pretty".

Transcript can be found here: http://dianasmanylifetimes.blogspot.com/2010/11/katie-makkai-pretty.html

http://www.now.org/organization/conference/2011/speakers.html

When I was just a little girl,
I asked my mother

“What will I be? Will I be pretty?

Will I be pretty? Will I be pretty?"

What comes next?

Oh right, "will I be rich?”

Which is almost pretty
depending on where you shop.

And the pretty question
infects from conception,

passing blood and breath into cells.

The word hangs from our mothers' hearts

in a shrill fluorescent
floodlight of worry.

"Will I be wanted? Worthy? Pretty?"

But puberty left me this funhouse mirror triad:

teeth set at science fiction angles, crooked nose,

face donkey-long and pox-marked

where the hormones went finger-painting.

My poor mother.

"How could this happen?

You'll have porcelain skin as soon
as we can see a dermatologist.

You sucked your thumb.

That's why your teeth look like that!

You were hit in the face
with a Frisbee when you were 6.

Otherwise your nose
would have been just fine!

Don't worry, we'll get it all fixed!"

she would say, grasping my face,

twisting it this way then that,

as if it were a cabbage she might buy.

But this is not about her.

Not her fault.

She, too, was raised to believe

the greatest asset she could
bestow upon her awkward little girl

was a marketable facade.

By 16, I was pickled with
ointments, medications, peroxides.

Teeth corralled into steel prongs.

Laying in a hospital bed,
face packed with gauze,

cushioning the brand new nose
the surgeon had carved.

Belly gorged on 2 pints of my own blood
I had swallowed under anesthesia,

and every convulsive twist of my gut

like my body screaming
at me from the inside out,

"What did you let them do to you!"

All the while this never-ending
chorus droning on and on,

like the IV needle dripping
liquid beauty into my blood.

“Will I be pretty? Will I be pretty?

Like my mother, unwinding the gift wrap

to reveal the bouquet of daughter
her $10,000 bought her?

Pretty? Pretty."

And now, I have not seen
my own face in 10 years.

I have not seen my own face in 10 years,

but this is not about me.

This is about the self-mutilating circus

we have painted ourselves clowns in.

About women who will
prowl 30 stores in 6 malls

to find the right cocktail dress,
but who haven't a clue

where to find fulfillment or how wear joy,

wandering through life
shackled to a shopping bag,

beneath the tyranny
of those 2 pretty syllables.

About men wallowing on bar stools,

drearily practicing attraction

and everyone who will drift home tonight,

crest-fallen because not enough
strangers found you suitably fuckable.

This, this is about
my own some-day daughter.

When you approach me,

already stung-stayed
with insecurity, begging,

"Mom, will I be pretty? Will I be pretty?"

I will wipe that question
from your mouth like cheap lipstick

and answer, “No!

The word pretty is unworthy
of everything you will be,

and no child of mine
will be contained in five letters.

"You will be pretty intelligent,

pretty creative, pretty amazing.

But you will never be

merely 'pretty'."