Beautiful Ghost

She is their mannequin. They dress her up and pose her any way they like. It isn’t even her face, they change it so much. Everyday a new look. She sees her picture up on a bill board but that is not her face. It’s just a lie, the image of some perfect creature who could never exist in real life. They don’t give her time to think. What she has to say is not important. She’s just supposed to be beautiful as they whisk her from photo shoot to photo shoot. But she doesn’t feel beautiful. They go at her with powders and glosses until they are satisfied. Then they unleash the photographer like lion at the colosseum. Each flash is like the molestation of her soul. She’s hungry and tired but there is always something else, somewhere else they need her to be.

Somewhere alone the way she lost herself. Everyone who’s close to her is far away. She just wants someone to hold her. Just one more shoot she kept telling herself. Just one more and then she’d be done but it never worked out that way. Something held her back. She had no way of picking up the pieces. They had taken everything from her. This wasn’t what she expected her life to be. It’s not all the glamor you see on tv. It was no longer important to her why they took her picture. She learned that she never had any say in that. She’d signed the contract, her body was theirs until she was no longer suitable.

When she showed up at five in the morning she knew this shoot was different. The usual chaos of people bustling around getting everything ready was strangely absent. Instead, there was just the photographer talking with his assistant and the makeup and wardrobe ladies. As she entered the photographer broke away to greet her. He took her chin in his hand to inspect her face.

“Go easy on the make up. She’s beautiful enough on her own. We don’t want to make her look unnatural.” And then it was the some routine as always. First hair and makeup and then wardrobe. It always seemed to take forever in that chair to make her look the way they want her to. When she is finally ready she is brought before the photographer. He looks at her critically for a moment, deciding what he wants from her on this shoot.

“I want you to be yourself for me. It’s a side of you rarely captured by the camera. It’s time we brought it out.”

“But I don’t know how.”

“Just be honest and you will come shining through naturally.”

He was the first person to not expect anything from her in this business. She was grateful because for the first time in a long time she felt beautiful. Because he didn’t want to turn her into something else. He saw what beauty was already there and brought it out for the world to see. The best makeup artist in the world couldn’t do that.