iCon - "In My Skin" (WOWPS 2016)

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Performing at the 2016 Women of the World Poetry Slam. iCon placed 4th in the tournament.

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Closed Caption:

when an asshole whose opinion you didn't
seek makes a comment about your makeup
pull out your compact mirror and
politely ask mr her to turn themselves
inside out for you
this is the palm that I've been afraid
to expose my scars in this is the palm
for every poem that uses cliché
wordplay and metaphors to conceal a
disgust for makeup under the mask of
empowerment the Queen you don't need
makeup to make up for something you are
lacking poems that are overdone a few
tutorials
I hear you but your preference for my
natural beauty has not been there on the
days when I've been brave enough to face
the world
bare-faced and you forced your stairs
comments and recommendations into my
already irritated skin
it's not been there on the days when no
matter what I've tried acne and eczema
we're still hell-bent on leaving their
mark this is not vanity
it is survival the only way i can avoid
having smudges of your jokes rub off on
the color of my self esteem for those
women who probably proclaimed I don't
need make-up working graduate from
fucking lations I'm sure there are
plenty of other things you need in order
to be more than just pretty
are those men who professed I don't like
women who wear makeup all I don't like
men who wear little dicks
so stop being one this is not your cross
to go bare forget walking a mile in my
shoes your ass when last one step
outside the front door in my skin
this is not shame this is cringing each
time I hear someone say the word makeup
as if it is the curse when the only
curse has been my bad skin and makeup
makeup has been a blessing to your
preconceived notions for why I'm a cover
girl must have been placed in Photoshop
because the line
you have crossed has become blurred not
all of us have the privilege of using
hashtag no filter or hashtag
I woke up like this some of us wake up
dreading the breakout brewing beneath my
epidermis
this is for those of us who paints not
to change our landscape but merely to
smooth out our canvas
this is not self hate this is loving the
skin i'm in
even if it is only an illusion that can
be washed away with soap and water
this is avoiding water parks and
swimming pool
rules this is not seeking a flood of
compliments this is not choice is a lack
of one
it's being born a leopard and
unwillingly put on the spot
unable to hide your own see nature has
always had a way of randomly selecting
which of his creatures will bear a
defect and on some days I wish our
reptile enough to call my way out of
this skin but there are those days when
i tell myself that this is not hyper
pigmentation that night when I'm sleep
God just hold my face so tight and
admiration that he leaves his
fingerprints on my cheeks
this is not me wishing to be something
I'm not let me passing is something I
already know without a shadow of a
blemish that i already am and that y'all
is fucking beautiful