When I was a child I would press my forehead against the mirror, trying to peer into another world, my two eyes gradually merging, making me become a cyclops instead of that small child.

  I would suddenly depart, ripping myself from the glass, the area under my nose condensed into a spade shape.

  I wonder if anyone else would look into the mirror, hoping that in another world they would look perfect. Maybe in that universe the spade would be turned as the world was rotated upside down. Perhaps the world was turned upside down from the start. I wonder if I peered into that mirror, for I thought I was that cyclops. Did all monsters first start off with thinking they were monsters? Did their brains make it real?

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  I would soon preen in the mirror. There were so many good qualities to pick and choose and so many I couldn't have a say in. My body was not a democracy but a dictatorship of acne.

  How many eyebrow hairs do you need to pluck?

  How many blackheads do you need to exterminate like pests?

  How many of your pores can you see in your skin?

  How many imperfections do you have?

  It's so filthy, disgusting, and dehumanizing.

  Aren't we all skin, guts, and bone?

  How are some of us so much more beautiful?

  How are some so lucky to be naturally born into beauty?

  Why couldn't I make myself beautiful?

  Why couldn't I stretch my skin like the fat on my cheeks into something perfect?

  There is no perfect, yet we see models displayed: sharp jawlines, ribcages, plastic surgery, perfect bodies as we salivate at them like stray dogs.

  If you aren't attractive you are treated like a monster.