Read I Am an Emotional Creature: The Secret Life of Girls Around the World for Free Online Page B

what they’re gonna do. You’re so strong, Rihanna. I watch you in the videos. Your arms and the way you move and your confidence. You look right into the camera. You are so much stronger. You could help Chris. Otherwise how are these boys gonna keep up? It’s like when we’re on the lake and I look at the water behind our motorboat and there’s this wake and it stays there after the boat has passed. There’s just these light waves of where something was once. It fills me with dread and makes me really scared. Sometimes I stop breathing. It’s like none of us were ever really here at all. I don’t want to be looking back on Brad like that. He’s the one real thing.

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