I Am an Emotional Creature by Eve Ensler
GIRL FACT
Girls between thirteen and eighteen years of age constitute the largest group in the sex industry. It is estimated that around half a million girls below the age of eighteen are victims of trafficking each year.
I HAVE 35 MINUTES BEFORE HE COMES LOOKING FOR ME
Sofia, Bulgaria
I am sixteen.
I am trembling.
I am always trembling.
The trembling is like
a body flinching after
it’s been shot.
I am dead inside.
He will come back.
I must speak quickly.
I hate my hair.
I was sold two years ago.
I can’t get out.
I am meat.
I am an animal.
I am sixteen.
I am owned by them.
They do what they want.
I am tall.
My legs are long.
There are burns.
I am an ashtray.
A garbage pail.
My hands trembling.
Sometimes they refuse to use condoms.
If we refuse them, we are beaten.
Look my back
There are gashes
I was twelve.
My father always drunk.
Always angry.
His friend, his best friend
who was forty started raping me.
Whenever he saw me.
He threatened to ruin me if I told.
He threatened to tell my father.
Two years
I did what he wanted.
He gave me syphilis.
This is herpes on my mouth.
I hate my hair.
(She stands up.)
What, what?
Are you sure he doesn’t know?
Are you sure he isn’t coming in?
(She sits down.)
We got caught. My father’s
best friend. Someone walked
in when he was raping me
against a wall.
He told my father I put him
up to it.
My father believed him.
My father beat me with a
wooden piece of furniture
and threw me out.
I could not walk for weeks.
But I was on the run.
17 minutes
My father exiled me,
and my mother,
because she was with him
twenty-two years,
did not speak up.
Fourteen, no place to go,
on the streets,
a man took me in.
Then my brother
my only friend
turned his back on me.
Then the man started
beating …
No place to go.
No way out.
Next to the police
Went there for help
A stolen wallet
A young one with a
crew cut
told me he knew of a job.
He brought me in. He sold me to them.
If I try to leave
they will kill my family.
I still love them.
The police
tied me to a bed
for seven hours
handcuffed my hands
made me naked
and six of them …
I am a garbage pail.
I am a receptacle.
I have been sick
There is no time
5 minutes
I don’t know why I was born.
I do not feel pleasure
I am only vulgar
Only flesh
If someone could see my heart
they would see it isn’t there
I hate my hair
I haven’t heard from
my mother in a year
This is not a choice
You go to the police to protect
You go to
Your father
Your mother
Your brother
Your boyfriend
I am sixteen
I am an animal
I am property
I am a receptacle
I am trembling
I am found on the streets of Paris
I am Bulgarian
I am from the Philippines
I was taken from Sierra Leone
I am Russian
I am from the killing fields
Sold in Tel Aviv, Amsterdam, Atlanta
I’m from Kosovo, Bombay, Ghana, Lebanon
I am a raped opening
I am about to become extinct
There will be nothing left of me
Elephant
Eagle
Girl
GIRL FACT
Barbie was based on a German doll called Lilli that was sold as a sexy novelty for men.
FREE BARBIE
Kwai Yong, China
Hello, my name is Chang Ying. I wish I could write you a proper letter, but I’m in a factory and I work twelve hours a day and if I’m late or I complain they will throw me out. Even thinking these thoughts could get me in trouble ’cause I could mess up and get my hand caught in the machine.
They hate it when we hurt the machines. They hate it when anything happens to us ’cause it slows everything down. That’s how LiJuan died. There was a fire one day and she was scared to leave her station ’cause she needed the job to feed her family and she was burned too badly.
But I can’t lie, I couldn’t really write you a letter ’cause I can’t read. I’m thirteen and I have been working since I was a kid. I speak good Chinese, I just can’t write it or read it.
But I have a lot to say and I think I can help you.
You may not think some poor girl who only makes a few cents an hour has anything to teach you. But I know a lot about Barbie. I am one of the people who makes her head. I actually see what goes into it.
As you can tell by now I have found a way to get this message to you. It isn’t a letter or Internet or phone. It’s what I call Head Send. Can you feel it? It is very strong. I started doing it when I was five. You have to think a thought very very intensely and then you have to imagine someone receiving the thought and then you close your eyes and concentrate and your head sends it.
Because I make Barbie’s head I Head Send my thoughts into each one of her brains. So whatever girl gets her will hear my thoughts.
I have made many, many heads so my message is in a lot of places. If you listen very closely to your Barbie—put her head to your ear like a shell—you will hear what I have to say.
Many, many of us girls are needed to make Barbie because three Barbies are sold every second. They told us this the first day of the job. They said girls like me were working in a lot of countries to make Barbie perfect. Her body comes from Taiwan. Her hair gets stuck on in Japan. Then she comes to China to get clothes and get her head put on her body. They said that 23,000 trucks a day go back and forth to the harbor crammed with Barbies so they can all sail to America and get packaged in pink and sent out.
They told us what we did here in China was the most important part and that we had to do it fast or we would not keep up and then little girls couldn’t get their Barbies.
At the beginning I used to worry about this and I would always be very nervous. I cut my hand a few times in the machine.
Then I saw a picture of Barbie’s dream house and it made me start thinking about where I live. I live in a nightmare house. It’s not even a house, a dormitory. It’s like prison Barbie, all us girls shoved into one ugly place. I started thinking about how one Barbie costs 200 yuan, but I work here where it is so hot, all day, six days a week, and I don’t make that much in a whole week.
I have never been anywhere else but I do not think anyone really looks like Barbie. She is so skinny, I heard she can’t even get her period. And my cousin who lives in America
I started thinking about how it’s actually hard to love Barbie the way she is now. She is very tough, so much plastic. She’s not cuddly at all. She can’t even put her arms around you. You have to do things for her: worship her, dress her, buy her things. She wants everything. She is very greedy and needy. That’s how they get you to spend more money.
Listen, it’s not Barbie’s fault, she doesn’t even have a chance. So many people control her—from the first plastic mold to her final accessory. In many ways she has less freedom than even me. She has no ability to walk away. Her legs probably wouldn’t hold her up anyway. So many people abuse her. You know, there is a whole group of Barbies—here at the factory we secretly call them the unfortunate ones—they get sent to Barbie headquarters in Los Angeles and a room of Barbie experts throw them and kick them and bite them to see if they can take it.
My cousin also told me that many girls love their Barbie at the beginning and then when they get older they turn on her.
They cut off all her hair or even her head or put her in the microwave oven.
The people who are in charge make her say really stupid things. They put words in her mouth:
Will we ever have enough clothes?
I want to go shopping.
Math is hard.
I know Barbie doesn’t really want to say any of this ’cause I know what’s going on in her head. She talks to me. She’s really angry. She’s really hurting. She is really guilty. She hates shopping and feels bad about all the girls who are starved to make her and are starving to be like her. She’s actually very messy and surprisingly loud. She is not at all polite and she hates being shoved into really tight clothes and pointy high uncomfortable shoes.
Barbie isn’t who you think she is. She’s so much smarter than they will let her be. She’s got great powers and is kind of a genius.
There are more than a billion Barbies in the world. Imagine if we freed them. Imagine if they came alive in all the villages and cities and bedrooms and landfills and dream houses. Imagine if they went from makeover to takeover. Imagine if they started saying what they really felt.
Let Barbie speak.
Head Send:
Free Barbie!
Head Send:
Free Barbie!
Free Barbie!
Free Barbie!
Ow! I just got my hand caught! It hurts. It’s bleeding. They are going to be very angry.
Head Send:
Free Chang Ying!
Head Send:
Free Chang Ying!
Let her out of this dirty sweaty factory.
Head Send:
Please.
SKY SKY SKY
Ramallah, Palestine
Dear Khalid,
I keep touching my hair
A kind of pastime
Running through
Running through.
It was thicker before.
Now it is water.
Something has left me.
I am not sure what it is.
Dear Khalid,
When I stood by your grave
I imagined them assembling
the pieces of your body like a puzzle.
Always this missing piece
and your hand
I kept thinking about your hand
gripping mine when you believed
in something enough
to die.
You would get excited.
Not happy excited like receiving a present.
More like determined.
No one was going to take your future away from you.
I kept thinking about the pieces
of your body
and how I loved each piece
but never separated before like this.
Dear Khalid,
Later I realized it began as a fever, the rage.
Two weeks after they threw the dirt on you
and gave me the scarf you wore for good luck.
I thought it was one of those illnesses
that we get from the bad water
from the lack of light
when there is no bread
when there is no baby’s milk
when everything gets shut down and off
when we are forced into one broken room for weeks,
months sometimes.
I thought it was an illness.
I was burning and I could not stop.
I wrapped myself in the fabric of your scarf
in your smell
thinking it would hold me in
or keep things out
but it didn’t.
Dear Khalid,
It was simple
the voice
when it came to me
so perfect, so clear:
Suicide bomber.
I said it out loud
in front of my friends
in the café
and the fever finally broke.
Dear Khalid,
They told me not to think about it.
They told me I’d be a hero.
They told me I’d join you in paradise.
They spoke too quickly.
They moved too fast.
I needed to take time.
There was a boy who would go with me.
I could tell he was afraid.
He was sweating.
He had acne.
Someone or something had sent him there
and like me he was trying to catch up.
Dear Khalid,
Maybe if they had sent a car that had lights
or a car that wasn’t broken or rusty.
Maybe if they hadn’t rushed me so fast.
Maybe if they had let me dress like myself
but the idea of dying
in a tank top with my belly exposed
the idea of dying in their jeans
the way they were rough and squeezed me in …
Dear Khalid,
It could have been your baby
I was carrying against my skin
strapped on like that
sucking life out of me
but it was a bomb
the size of a torso
extending now, like an overgrown tumor
sucking the life
there could have been
little fingers instead of nails
something
we created out of tenderness
but it was something to blow
people up.
Dear Khalid,
In the plaza
where they play backgammon
we were sent to our places
like we were bad in school
to stand
to get ready to explode, to die
in our places.
I knew the boy wanted to turn back
but he was a boy and had no choice.
Then suddenly the plaza became
faces
faces, faces.
My mother, my father, my aunt, and you,
Khalid, were there in those Israeli plaza
eyes.
I looked up then
It was blue
Life-giving blue blue sky
bigger than the plaza
or Palestine or the Jews
or even you, Khalid.
There was sky sky sky
and I couldn’t do it
and I turned as his body exploded
his boy head
shattered and now
there were more missing pieces.
Dear Khalid,
I do not understand why
they are keeping me here.
I changed my mind.
I turned back.
You would think they’d appreciate me.
You would have to imprison every Palestinian
for having bad fantasies or thoughts.
How else would we survive?
I don’t really mi
At least I no longer have to pretend I’m free.
I do not have illusions.
I do not have hate.
I do not have a boyfriend.
I cannot go home again,
I am older.
My hair is water.
THE WALL
Jerusalem, Israel
My friend Adina takes me to the other side of
the West Bank wall.
I am surprised at what it’s like over there.
It somehow seems taller
You would need a helicopter to get over it
Hard mean cement dividing energy, houses,
land, and friends
I go back.
I hear more stories.
No water on this side,
No wells
No pomegranates or figs
No jobs
No way out.
I protest on Fridays
with mainly Palestinian boys.
They do not understand what an Israeli
girl is doing there.