A Greek mythological take on Barbie
Edited by: Stuti Sharma
‘Cause I, I
I don’t know how to feel
But I wanna try
I don’t know how to feel
But someday, I might
Someday, I might
(From What Was I Made For by Billie Eilish)
I open my eyes, feeling the warm dewy air on my ivory skin. My cold blue-green veins pulse in sync with the rhythm of a heart I didn’t know I had. I raise my eyes, and the darkness that had previously filled my mind gives way to a clear, golden light, to skies that stretch beyond the field of my vision, to unexplored heavens that I will never be able to see. But the knowledge that those skies exist, that their light can fall on my skin, that I can feel it warming my body, that knowledge, that awareness is enough. I lower my eyes, and meet those of my creator, the one who gave me the gift of consciousness: Pygmalion.
***
He tells me that I am the perfect woman, the embodiment of perfection and heavenly beauty. But is this what I was made for? To be a flawless showpiece in his living room, to satiate his sensual pleasures? I look up at the sky, at the unexplored world, and then I look at him, and am brought down to earth again. There is a world out there, vast and beautiful and alive, that I long to touch, that I yearn to explore…
***
He says that he made me because he was dissatisfied with other women, but I look out of the window now and then and see women, strong, beautiful women, women with faces like suns that gleam with inner strength and majesty, though social prejudices cloud these suns sometimes. I look at them and think that there can be no such thing as an ideal woman. There is no one way to be a woman.
***
I used to float, now I just fall down
I used to know but I’m not sure now
What I was made for
What was I made for?
Today, I woke up with blemishes on my skin, dark circles under my eyes. When he looked at them, his eyes widened with disbelief, and the smile on his face faded. Now, there are more and more days when my hair isn’t perfect, when my skin isn’t unblemished. Each day is a struggle now: I am locked in a conflict between the perfect statue I was made as and the living imperfection I have now become. Is this what it means to be human? To watch your body wither away like the leaves of a tree stuck in autumn, to watch time leave its haunting marks on you? I can’t help but feel that he would like me better if I had remained a statue, caught in time, lifeless, voiceless.
***
One day, I disagreed with him about an opinion he had, and presented my own views. He scowled and didn’t talk to me for a whole day. Every day, the gap between who I was made to be and who I am widens, and I flounder in that empty space, that cold nothingness between two forms of being.
***
Takin’ a drive, I was an ideal
Looked so alive, turns out I’m not real
Who am I? This question rattles my mind, and I am unable to sleep at night. Am I my snow-white ivory skin, my perfect proportions that are no longer perfect? Am I the mute, thoughtless statue that I was made to be? Am I my mind, the mind that refuses to submit, that refuses to stop thinking? Or am I something else entirely, my identity beyond all of this, locked away in a place I can’t access? I struggle to find certainty, to make meaning out of all the constant, blaring stimuli that the world throws at me, to unravel the complex layers of reality.
***
Something I’m not, but something I can be
Something I wait for
Something I’m made for
Something I’m made for
Today, the sound of music touched my ears for the first time, and I wept. He showed me more of his statues, and I was awestruck by them. Is this what it means to create meaning? To synthesize disparate feelings and experiences into art, to create something beautiful out of the cacophony of lived experience? I too want to live that way: to live beyond my body, beyond the shadowy cages of my slippery personhood. I want to go from being the created to a creator. I will dream of this until my dying day.