Serafina+M’s+Final+AmEx+Speech+2017

The first time I ever heard the word was when I was 5, I was in the park bright pink tutu, blue shirt, pink sandals and bright pink lipstick I stole out of my mom’s bathroom and loved to wear. I was in the park playing on the playground a normal Sunday afternoon. When a man approached me, mom always taught me not to talk to strangers but this man wasn't a stranger. He said hi and I said hi standing at the top of the slide, he looked up my skirt, I knew it was wrong and when I slid down the slide and landed at the bottom he told me my lipstick made me look like a slut. I ran across the street back to my house. After that day that man would make me follow a prophecy I never knew I had. The second time I heard the word I was in the 7th grade. All my friends were boys that was the way I liked it, it was never weird or awkward, I mean really it's part of the reason I am who I am today, but the one thing they don't tell you about only having guy friends is that it makes you a slut. I heard the whispers from the girls I knew didn't like me, mom always said they were just jealous, but I knew that wasn't true. They called me what they wanted they turned into my name and for the longest time I Believed them. But momma always said people will be mean, you just have to be nicer. So I tried and then it came from a friend, it came from someone I trusted so I knew it must be true. When finally I graduated, I knew I would step into a new world, one I hoped would bring me a new start away from the friends who once called me my new name. I thought high school would give me back serafina. Although I quickly learned that couldn't be farther from the truth. I thought new friends would be nicer, new strangers would be kinder. I overestimated people. In the 9th grade I really had no friends and as I started to make friends through classes and sports, I started to meet boys. Maybe it could go back to the way it was. Maybe they could be my new friends and maybe I could really get my fresh start. I was wrong. High School is where confidence comes to die. I didn’t just receive my new label girls who didn’t know me and guys who wished they did. I got it from adults too, ones who thought my long legs should be a curse and my shorts from old navy should be a way to further embolden my scarlet letter. Of course it wasn’t straight out, names and labels, it was the ever present comment “you need to change”. Of course I knew that, I knew I didn’t fit in, I knew I stood out. Change your clothes they said, I heard change who you are because otherwise we can’t do a damn thing about what boys will say. You put yourself out there, you want people to like you, and more than often they take advantage of it. I had friends who I thought were good ones, best friends forever as they say, but even then, jokingly, kidding, no offense, the same words the same names came pouring out of their mouths too. I know what I’ve done, I’ve made peace with it. They know too and they use it to turn insecurities into insults and they use it to hurt me. It all peaked in this wonderful year, the one they say will be the best and the worst of your life. The one that changes it all. Junior year, seventeen the dancing queen, the one who has big dreams. I came in knowing who my friends, knowing who was in my corner. That is never secure, people switch and they change and suddenly you don’t know where you stand. The worst of it, the time when I felt it burn me, scar me, turn me into everything they always said I was. Was only a couple months ago. Im sure everyones heard the stories, heard the lies. Everyone always thinks they know more than they actually do. There's a long and convoluted story that goes along with the last couple months, but really it doesn't matter. It didn't matter to them when they put the label, it didn’t matter to them when they ignored my handle with care sticker, it didn’t matter to them when they wrote my life and when I read it I didn't know me. They didn’t care, it gave them an ego boost, it made them feel like a bigger man, but what about people liking you, people giving you a chance, people letting things go and letting you start over makes you the better person. I don’t get that, I get to fight to keep myself afloat, to show people, to remedy my reputation, to constantly have to live to someone else's standards and I'm done. You got to turn me into an object, you got to make them believe you, you got to spill lies like the truth, and I got slut, the same name the same label that I have had since I was 5 and what about that is such an ego boost. The America I want to grow old in does not have room for boys like these. The ones who snap send pics, the ones who make comments in the halls, the ones who post on twitter their conquests. The boys who get a nickname and varsity jacket all to hid what's right behind that screen what's right behind that ego. The America I want to grow old in doesn’t have room girls who let this get to them. It has girls who stand up for themselves and for other girls and say screw off, I am beautiful, I am confident, i am worthy of love, and I will never fall under your label. I will wear what I want, I will do what I want, it is my body, my mind, mine. The America I want to grow old in has girls who know they are loved, and know that they have someone in their corner. I want to someday tell my daughter as she walks out the door, you look beautiful and have her believe it, because no boy, no adult, no girl at school has told her different. Made her think that her name was anything less then the name I gave her at birth. The America I want to grow old in is one where that the label I wear will go back to not existing, it will be irrelevant, it won’t mean anything. I don’t wear this label anymore, because at the end of the day when I go home, when I’m that kid again wearing bright pink lipstick, I am nothing but beautiful, I am nothing but myself