The Pauperly Princess

Once upon a time, there lived a Princess in the Kingdom of Attorneys. The Princess was forbidden from engaging with the world below her family’s skyscraper, but she collected all the land artifacts that made their way up the tower: a stray coffee shop punch card, a knock-off Goyard bag from the lost & found, a Hunger Games paperback that she furtively stole from her father’s secretary. These things spoke to her of another life, one that would free her from the confines of the 88th floor.

One fateful day, King Senior Partner caught the Princess ogling an electrical engineer who had come to fix the tower’s faulty broadband. Full of rage, he destroyed the girl’s collection of middle-class treasures. “This is who you are!” he said, gesturing at the tower’s lacquered boardroom. “Not,” he said, pinching a tattered copy of Nylon Magazine between two fingers, “this.”

Overcome, the princess cried out, “No, Papa! I love that! I want to be an English Major!” Her father gasped and banished her to her room, which was actually a suite of three rooms, so not that bad.

Late that night, she got online and made a pact with the Student Loan Witch: In exchange for debilitating, non-dischargeable debt, she would be allowed to live on land amongst the middle class and major in English.

Away at school in a foreign fiefdom called Ohio, she fell hopelessly in love with the university’s literary magazine. She saved it from certain death by holding a very successful erotic bake sale fundraiser, and as graduation approached, she planned to be a writer and felt certain that her happiness was secured.

(But this is based on the Hans Christian Anderson fairytale, not the Disney version.)

Although she loved the publishing industry dearly, it abandoned her and married the internet. She tried to get on board, but all the internet-based outlets wanted her to write for exposure instead of actual money. Tragically, she starved to death within a few short years.

Okay, really she became a receptionist at a boutique fitness studio, which is almost as sad.

Hansel & Gretel & Moon Unit

Long, long ago (like, back in 2014), there was a Woodcutter who lived with his second wife and three teenaged children. Their names were Hansel, Gretel, and Moon Unit, because their parents had been hippies in the ‘60s and liked to consider themselves unconventional.

The family lived comfortably until a terrible blight of the Atkins Diet arrived in the land. “Jesus,” said Moon Unit, “can’t we have some goddamn bread?” “No,” said the Woodcutter, “and for that lip, I’m going to confiscate your phones!” And with that, he banished them to the forest to gather kindling for their stepmother’s artisan wood-burning stove.

Without their phones, it didn’t take long before they were completely lost. “My blood sugar is really low,” whined Hansel. Miserable and hangry, Moon Unit & Gretel nodded in agreement.

Suddenly, they came upon a wonderful gingerbread house in a clearing! Famished, they fell upon the house and totally wrecked their keto.

Unbeknownst to them, the witch who lived there had seen them approach and hatched a plan. You see, she was doing a Whole 30 to kick her killer sweet tooth, and when the three teens approached, she saw a great source of protein and healthy fats.

Résumé For A Twitter Egg

She went outside. “Come in,” she said sweetly, “I have so many treats to give you.” The teens, exhausted, happily accepted the invitation. “You must stay,” she said, “for surely you are gravely mistreated at home.” “Nah,” replied Hansel, “Our dad and stepmom are actually cool. They just got married, so dad is going through this weirdly demonstrative parenting phase. But he’ll chill soon. Can we use your phone to find our way home?”

“NO!” the witch shrieked. She flew over to the door and fastened the lock. “Foolish children! I’ll have you for supper with some zucchini noodles!” Hansel, Gretel, and Moon Unit exchanged glances. “Um,” said Gretel, “I’m not sure you can imprison us. The bolt on that door is a candy bar sliding into a donut. Like, we could just eat it and leave.” By the time Gretel finished, Hansel and Moon Unit had already chewed a large hole in the wall.

“CURSE YOU!” shrieked the witch, “If I can’t eat you, I’ll hex you with a subprime mortgage crisis that will doom your entire generation to downward mobility!”

“Honestly,” said Moon Unit as the three walked away, “given the exploding cost of college tuition, we sort of already expected that.”

Rakalezel

Once upon a time, there lived a man who stole some kale from his neighbor for his pregnant wife. This was both rude and foolish, because his neighbor was a powerful witch. One night, she caught him and threatened to curse him if he didn’t give her his unborn child. Being a dopey and juvenile ‘90s-sitcom-husband-type, he agreed. His wife was used to his doofus-y antics, so she just rolled her eyes while a laugh-track played in the background.

The child was born and given to the witch, who named her Rakalezel and locked her in a tower, because the other witches in her book club raved about the positive effects of tower-parenting. To keep Rakalezel safe from the many dangers of the outside world — crime and drugs and violence and vaping — the witch sealed the tower’s door. When she wanted to see her, she’d text “Rakalezel, Rakalezel, turn on your webcam” and the two would chat over Skype.

But Rakalezel was lonely. Her only companion was a YouTube supercut of celebrities dabbing. Then, one fateful day, Rakalezel discovered Tinder. There, she encountered an affable hippie who explained that the crime rate was actually declining, and that the impact of crime was exaggerated by conservative media outlets to fuel the prison-industrial complex. They exchanged SkypeIDs and spoke every night, falling deeply in love.

Unbeknownst to Rakalezel, the witch had installed spyware on her phone (by the way, did I mention that the witch was a conservative megadonor? Well, she was). When she found out about the hippie, she fell into a rage and banished Rakalezel to the desert. That was actually perfect, because the hippie lived in New Mexico. They got married and had twins, and they tried not to be such overbearing helicopter parents themselves. They lived happily and dabbed often.

You will climb to the top of the jungle gym where at the tender age of 9, your best friend Bobby is hanging upside down and screaming curse words to make the other kids laugh. He never sticks up for you when they call you names, but he never calls you names either. You will sit at the top of the dome. You are hungry for acceptance, starving. You will learn how to eat off this small kindness; you will learn to pretend that it fills you up. You will recall your mother describing the car accident she got into as a teenager.

You will shut your eyes as you hear her talk about getting her jaw wired shut, and how much weight she lost. You will try to use all the fifth grade math in your little fifth grade head to figure out how you can land in such a way that will require your own jaw to be wired shut, to calculate how much weight you could lose. Math was never your strong suit, though, and you’re too young to have learned geometry so you resign yourself to another day of existing Like This. Fat.

You will feel undesired by men. Your first experience with sex will be with a man who fed you crumbs in terms of affection, crumbs you happily accepted and crumbs you convinced yourself kept you full. Your first experience with sex will be red and painful and violent. You will be 14 when you break down outside of Spanish class, and when Dante asks you what’s wrong you will confess, begging silently for him to absolve you. He will not believe you—he will tell you, matter-of-factly, that you are simply not pretty enough to get raped. You will swallow it back down and it will be two years before you tell anyone. You will fail your Spanish exam that day. You will fail every Spanish exam after that. When you are in your art class next period, you will stare at the wire clay cutter in your hand, bile and rage and fear stinging, sour, in the back of your throat. You will fantasize about slicing your gut off like cool gray clay. About sloughing off your thighs and your hips and your chin and your arms like the soft wet brick that sits on the table in front of you. Until you are small enough to be believable. Until you are pretty enough to have been raped.

You resign yourself to another day of existing Like This. Fat.

You will spend years in a relationship with a man who will say he loves you. You’re beautiful, he will say. When he fucks you he will maul your soft breasts, he will bite at your sinewy neck. When you examine yourself in the mirror, you will always think that you’re lucky that you have the face, the chin, the neck of a much smaller woman.

When he fucks you, the lights will stay off. He will not touch your gut. He will go out of his way to avoid it. By now, you have noticed that you’re hungry, that you’ve been hungry, that he’s left you starving, and so you end things. He will move out and take the bed, the TV, the cat you thought you wanted.

I’m A Fat Girl In A Tutu Who Loves To Take Up Space

You’ll go on a date with a mortician you meet online. His curly hair will be piled on his head in a thick bun and you will think that it must weigh almost as much as the rest of his bony frame. He will try to finger you in the photo booth at a dirty dive bar. You will take him home, he’ll roll a joint, you’ll start to kiss. For a moment his desire will confuse you; you will have a fleeting feeling of fullness.

You will feel close to sated until he grabs at your fat rolls so hard, you will flinch and as he pinches and pulls, you will feel his cock strain and swell against his jeans. Later, when he is buttoning up his pants, he will ask you if you have ever let anyone feed you before. You will block his number and you will cry in the shower the next day when you find dark blue fingerprints, as though he had marked you when he squeezed you, freckled across your gut and thighs.

You will be promised that you do not deserve love. You will believe it. You will be loved in secret by men too ashamed to claim you. You will be loved in public, but you will not be able to shake the feeling that you’re loved in spite of your body. You will never ask if he loves you. You will be fetishized. You will be told one hundred times that a body like yours was Built For Sex, that that’s all you’re good for, and you will waste years believing them.

You will fall in love with yourself, in spite of it all. You don’t know how it happens—maybe it’s the beautiful femmes down the street who paint their hair and lips blue and encase their guts in spandex and invite you to their house parties. Maybe you start to see yourself through the eyes of the beautiful boy with perfect teeth, who swallows hard and looks in awe when he sees you naked for the first time.

Maybe it’s that you found magic, and through magic you have learned that your body is just a tool, a resource for navigating this life. That your tender heart is a gift. Maybe you’re just tired, maybe this lifetime of hating yourself has finally caught up with you, and maybe you need relief.

You will fall in love with yourself, in spite of it all.
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But whatever the reason, it will happen. Before you know it, you will fall in love with the way you can trace the outline of your gut pressing against your tight black bodycon dress. With the way your loud, Ursula the sea witch laugh commands just as much space as your body. With the cellulite that dots the tops of your thighs. You will not fall in love with the way it burns when they rub in the summer, but you’ll fall in love with the way you bounce when you walk.

You will fall in love with yourself, and you will feel full.