YWP: ‘Rules’

[Y]oung Writers Project, an independent nonprofit based in Burlington, engages young people to write and use digital media to express themselves with clarity and power, and to gain confidence and skills for school, the workplace and life.

Check out the most recent issue of The Voice, Young Writers Project’s monthly digital magazine. Click here.

Each week, VTDigger features a writing submission – an essay, poem, fiction or nonfiction – accompanied by a photo or illustration from Young Writers Project. YWP publishes about 1,000 students’ work each year here, in newspapers across Vermont, on Vermont Public Radio and in YWP’s monthly digital magazine, The Voice. Since 2006, it has offered young people a place to write, share their photos, art, audio and video, and to explore and connect online at youngwritersproject.org. For more information, please contact Susan Reid at sreid@youngwritersproject.org.

Artwork by Lauren Hall/YWP Media Library

If the transition from childhood to adulthood is a tumultuous time for all, a case can still be made today that young women experience a significantly higher level of social pressure than young men do in their teens. This week’s poet, Crystal Arian of Montpelier, echoes back the absurdities of our gendered culture that dictate the ways she should or should not present herself. As she winks through words in her final stanza, however, sometimes rules are meant to be broken.

Rules

By Crystal Arian, 13

Number one:
Make sure
you are perfect –
no quirks,
no flaws.

Number two:
Make sure
you are normal –
that you’re blonde,
you’re short.

Number three:
Make sure
you are balanced.
Make sure
you are skinny,
make sure
you have curves.

Number four:
Make sure
you are popular –
always pretty,
always flawless.

Number five:
Make sure
you are confident –
no insecurities,
no shallowness.

Oh, whoops,
another oops…
Looks like I broke
all the rules again.