The Girl Who Changed Her Face

By Sharda Gupta

I was eleven

when someone said,

“You’d be prettier if your nose were straighter.”

And that day,

I became a construction site—

a body forever under renovation.

First went the mole above my lip,

then the shade of my skin—

not honey, not caramel—

but something called “#FFEDDB.”

I googled “aesthetic jawlines”

and practiced smiling like silence,

like pain tucked under high cheekbones.

I downloaded apps

that let me erase myself

pixel by pixel—

they never warned me

that every deletion was a funeral.

The girl I used to be

smelled of coconut oil and rebellion,

laughed too loudly,

had crooked teeth

but didn’t apologize for them.

Now she is buried

under contour lines and augmented lashes,

and no one visits her grave.

Not even me.

My mother wept once

when I sent her a filtered selfie.

“Whose face is this?” she whispered.

I did not have the courage

to answer:

It’s the face the world prefers.

Boys loved my avatar,

said I was “goddess-level pretty.”

I ghosted them

before they could meet my actual face—

a crime scene of pores and shame.

What’s the cost of beauty

when you no longer recognize

your own reflection?

When your mirror becomes

a foreign language

you forgot how to read?

I am tired.

Tired of being perfect in screenshots,

and invisible in real life.

Tired of deleting zits

when I should be deleting pain.

If I must be beautiful,

let me be beautiful in breaking.

Let my skin remember

how to feel without permission.

Let my face belong to me again—

even if it means

being ugly

to the world.

By Sharda Gupta