Full Title: “Watch this 7th grader use slam poetry to tell girls: ‘You are good enough’ (via PBS)”
When Olivia Vella’s seventh grade teacher asked every student to write a monologue on a topic about which they were passionate, Vella immediately knew what she wanted to say. She wanted to tell girls her age that they were talented, smart and beautiful — no matter how often they were told otherwise.
The slam poem, which Vella performed for her class and on video, begins with a list of ways a girl can fit in — trendy outfit, styled hair, tight Converse shoes. As Vella’s voice shakes, she begins to ask: “Why am I not good enough?” But by the end of the poem, she’s turned the question on its head. “You are loved. You are precious … You are deserving of respect,” she tells the room. “And most of all, you are good enough.”
“I think that you just go to the store and you see this magazine that says: ‘Look at this new way to lose weight.’ Or you see this perfect selfie of someone,” she said, speaking by phone from Queen Creek, Arizona, where she attends Queen Creek Middle School. “And this society wants everyone to be perfect and just be like objects.”
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