“You look just like a doll. A porcelain doll. Has anyone ever told you that?”
It’s supposed to be a compliment, and I know that there’s some truth behind it. When I was in Costa Rica last summer, the girls I worked with would all refer to me as la muñeca – the doll. I know that, in some aspects, I look like one; I’ve got pale skin, rosy cheeks and big blue eyes. It’s supposed to be a compliment. On good days, I can view it as being such.
On bad days, however, it’s the worst of insults. Dolls aren’t real. They resemble human beings, but there’s no real depth or substance to them. And to be a porcelain doll is so much worse; porcelain dolls aren’t meant to be played with. They’re meant to be set upon a shelf, looked at but not touched, because they’re too fragile to be handled.
I do not want to be fragile. I do not want to be fake. And I do not want to be a porcelain doll.
Aww, Melissa, you’ve got it backwards. Before ‘supermodels’ came along, porcelain dolls were the original impossible standard of beauty. But here’s the secret: porcelain dolls only wish they could be more like you. You’ve got strength, warmth, heart, grace, a head that’s so very much more than ornamentation, and those eyes of yours can convey it all in a single glance. You’re such a genuine person . . . come to think of it, I wish I were more like you.
These people must not know you very well at all. You’re cute, but that belongs to you. You’re no one’s toy and never were. Given a choice, I would personally prefer to talk to an intelligent woman than play with a doll–granted, I’m a man, so maybe my perspective is skewed, but I’ll stand by it; dolls can’t think, and they can’t love. That alone shows how much more you are than they.
So when someone tells you you look like a porcelain doll, I would ask you to not be angry or upset, but instead please remember to pity the dolls their vacuous stares, painted-on rosy cheeks, empty heads, and emptier lives. They were created at their full potential; they’ll never be anything more than they are, and one wrong touch can make them substantially less. Though they try, they’re a (literally) pale imitation of reality, and will never be even a thousandth part of the woman you were born to be.
This is why you should stick with teddy bears; they don’t pretend to be more than they are, and they’re cuddly, too. Do you still have yours?
Have a blessed day.
K
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