Short stories

Discovery

As far as I remember, I've always wanted to live in the United States of America.

I dreamed of being an actress in Hollywood movies, I wanted to be a star until I discovered the ugly truth about this universe.

When I got to Los Angeles for the first time it was like a dream come true. I was in my element.

I did plenty of castings until I got noticed by a young director. At first he was really nice to me when he wasn't famous yet. We got close enough until we became friends, I was his muse since the early stages of his career.

Something changed in him when he started to get fame, he asked me things for his movies that weren't him. He started to sexualise me and was extremely worried about my weight. He wanted me to be thinner but also has more chest or more cheeks. For him I was prettier and more desirable if I was thinner and I believed him because I was young and even if I was quite unsure about this fact, I started to believe him because he told me those things quite often to don't say nonstop.Other producers were the same with me. I was just a doll that they can shape as they wish. I was just a piece of furniture in their movies.

At first I thought it was normal, I had to be careful with my image and body.

No one told me that I had the choice and also told me that I could firmly say no to all of this if I didn't want to do something, I had the choice on my body.

My view about how I should be seen on screen was completely changed when I met my boyfriend of the time, who is now my lovely husband, told me it was okay to eat a whole pizza if I wanted it when he saw me starving myself by eating a single apple as a meal. He comforted me and told me that all those things about my body weren't normal at all, the cinema industry wanted to have a restraining influence on me and my body by telling me that it was okay and for my own good. The cinema industry has a misogynistic view and influence on women's bodies and my boyfriend lived it through myself and we took conscience of it together.

After that, and with him to help me when I needed it, I was able to stop about those restrictions to keep me thin and perfect for them.I started to be perfect for myself, which was the most important, and I started to feel like myself again when I gained a little bit of weight.

I started to see life as wonderful as I saw before starting my career because all those restrictions made me sick easily and I started to get depressed.

The cinema industry didn't see that from the same eye and started to give me less and less important roles before starting to call me less and less because I was no longer their muppet. I didn't listen to their pieces of advice about my body if I wanted to continue my career in the cinema; I didn't care about what they were thinking of what I was doing with my body. I loved myself like that, I didn't want to lose a single ounce for them once again.

I have no regrets with my career, I loved my job but I despite the industry itself, which is ugly with women.

Now that I have left this universe I realize how much cinema shapes our societies, they tell us how to be or not be, it shapes us from our early stages of life with cartoons, to our teenage years until our adulthood with movies made for every generation.