Aspirationally Smooth, Inspirationally Unrealistic
Poem for Smooth Challenge Entry
Maybe just photoshopped
Airbrushed, auto-corrected
Aspirationally smooth
Inspirationally unrealistic
Smooth beauty and sex sells
Flash of the hairless
Blushed and taut
To perfection
Unblemished and untarnished
Without imperfection
Standards met
Just how we like it
We're supposed to like it
Supposed to love it
Desire it
Scars, freckles
unwanted hair, unsightly bulges
Rough and lived-in
Hidden in plain sight
Beneath faux-skin
All the right places
All the wrong ways
Turing test fail
Barely human
Anymore
*
Thanks for reading!
Author's Notes: So, yeah, Smooth Challenge, which you can find out more about below, has really got me thinking.
Thank you for reading and if you enjoy or have thoughts, as always, I welcome all interactions and comments.
If you have time and are so inclined, here are a couple of others:
You can also take a closer look at my profile for more of my work here.
About the Creator
Paul Stewart
Award-Winning Writer, Poet, Scottish-Italian, Subversive.
The Accidental Poet - Poetry Collection out now!
Streams and Scratches in My Mind coming soon!
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Comments (8)
Maybelline might sue... ;) Seriously, I love this one!
If I only saw your cover pic without reading your title and subtitle, I would have thought that you were gonna tell a horror story of a scary smiling lady. With that being said, I still feel your poem is scary. People are now becoming more plastic everyday. Loved your poem!
Aliens!! I just don’t get the pressures that guys and girls in their 20s now need to change their faces with Botox etc. Maybe I don’t have same pressure sure, but it’s still absurd. 👍excellent poem!! Lots going on here to contemplate!
This is great, I love the acknowledgement that the perfection is something that we have been conditioned to want alongside an acknowledgement that without the person within, stretching out the skin and crinkling it, we would be left wanting.
Nicely done -Guess we're both feeling the fakeness these day hey? I have wrinkles that have been lived in -Got a whole story on my face 😁
Interesting. The picture at the top struck me immediately as plastic, empty, lifeless, soulless. And my first thought is, "Is that really what (not who) we're supposed to want? Does anyone really want that? I mean, even Lars eventually turned toward the real girl."
very true.
So, beauty is...what? I have a plastic surgery friend, a woman, who used to tell me, "I can't make ugly pretty; I can only make ugly tighter." And then there's what's inside.