Writing, anyone?

I went to the MoMA today, and spent a lot of time in the Sweet Violence exhibit. It amazed me. This piece, -tentatively- titled Who Calls You Beautiful?, came from it.

You are wearing Gucci sunglasses that draw attention to your perfectly sculpted cheekbones, and I am wondering, “Who calls you beautiful?”
You are pictured on a black couch, sexy, smoking a cigarette.
You are posing for a camera, naked, splashing water onto your face.
You are bathing, radiant, under magazine-heading text that reads Risveglia la tua pelle!
You are brushing onto your cheeks rouge that conceals scars.
You are painting the image of your child, perfect and happy, smiling in a bubbly tub.
You are showing your pregnant belly in front of a window filled with light.
You are whipping egg whites, your cherry-patterned apron tied tightly around your waist as you stir in a cup of sugar.
You are wearing Gucci sunglasses that draw attention to your perfectly sculpted cheekbones, and I am wondering, “Who calls you beautiful?”


You are a Polish mother of three who has been beaten.
You are a sixty-four-year-old married woman who has had an abortion.
You are an Italian divorcee with hope for a better life.
You are a Serbian mother who has, literally, been stabbed in the back.
“Who calls you beautiful?” I want to ask, “Is it the men behind the cameras or the husbands that beat you or the children covered in wounds, not smiling, not living the childhood for which you had hoped, but instead bathing in a pool of crimson?”

You are wiping away your makeup with cloths now covered in shades of nude and pink.
You are throwing away, sheet by sheet, visions of a life, images at once hopeful and sunny and love-filled.


You are a refugee.
You are living in a shelter.
You are being cared for by women.
You are sharing your story.
You are rebuilding your life.
And I am wondering, “Do you call yourself beautiful, yet?”