Body Dismorphia Quotes

“She surrendered her body to the judgment of someone else's eyes- and that was a source of anxious uncertainty.”
― Milan Kundera, Life is Elsewhere

“Even at such a tender age, I knew that life is lived in leftovers, account ledgers, and timetables rather than in the Platonic sphere of perfect theory. I couldn't float sylphlike around Love Hall in the flowing robes of indeterminacy for the rest of my life, however much I wished there to be no change. I had to accept my responsibilities and, at least in the eyes of the world and at least for the time being, nail my colors to a mast. Unless I wished to appear a strange wonder for the rest of time, caked in circus makeup covering the truth inches beneath, the mast would be male.”
― Wesley Stace, Misfortune

“Today’s pubic hair removal may indicate something similar: we have opened our most intimate parts to unprecedented scrutiny, evaluation, commodification. Largely as a result of the Brazilian trend, cosmetic labiaplasty, the clipping of the folds of skin surrounding the vulva, has skyrocketed: while still well behind nose and boob jobs, according to the American Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons (ASAPS), there was a 44 percent rise in the procedure between 2012 and 2013—and a 64 percent jump the previous year. Labiaplasty is almost never related to sexual function or pleasure; it can actually impede both. Never mind: Dr. Michael Edwards, the ASAPS president in 2013, hailed the uptick as part of “an ever-evolving concept of beauty and self-confidence.” The most sought-after look, incidentally, is called—are you ready?—the Barbie: a “‘ clamshell’-type effect in which the outer labia appear fused, with no labia minora protruding.” I trust I don’t need to remind the reader that Barbie is (a) made of plastic and (b) has no vagina.”
― Peggy Orenstein, Girls & Sex: Navigating the Complicated New Landscape

“I despise it - my body only ever betrayed me: I don't live in it, I live up here, in my mind and words...”
― Sarah Perry, The Essex Serpent

“Because I’m bald, right?”
She nodded hesitantly, trying not to hurt him,

Silence did the rest.

Bald = unloved. Simple math.


He fought it.

Creams. Pills. Surgery.

A year of becoming someone else.

The hair came back. Self worth didn't.



He knocked again.

“I'm not bald anymore.”

She looked at him, he’d missed the point.

“It wasn’t the hair,” she said, gently.


She took a step closer.

Just the truth standing between them.

"I almost loved you," her voice barely a whisper,

"But you did not."



He didn’t know what cut deeper —

Her words, or how she handed them to him,

Or the truth that had always been there,

Quiet in the corner, waiting to be seen.



It wasn’t the baldness.

It was the fear that he wasn’t enough.

And that’s what she saw,

Not a man without hair, but a man without peace.



For peace isn’t found in the fixing.

It is found in accepting

Your flaws, your fears,

And in the belief that you are enough.

Even if the hair never grows back.”
― Shon Mehta, The Uncharted Mind