This poem is an emotional breakdown of the relentless, commercialized pressure of beauty standards. The voice is overwhelmed, asking what kind of “pretty” is required: “Boy pretty? / Girl pretty? / Frog pretty?”. The world demands constant consumption and transformation, causing the speaker to feel either “still too much, / still not enough”.
The counter-argument is an appeal to authentic, internal beauty. It urges us to find value in the pause, the breath, and the wrinkles that tell stories. Beauty is not a number or a shape. It is “the slow unraveling, / the becoming, / the remembering, / the living”.
- See the beauty in the wrinkles,
- see the beauty in the gray hairs,
- see the beauty in the pause,
- in the breath,
- in the being.