Dear You, 

What is your identity? The agency you have, as people exclaimed in my last letter to you, is it truly really yours?

You are still called - Ibsen’s Nora. 
Ibsen’s. 
He constructed you. He moulded you. He empowered you. 
By his morality. 
Him. 

But, they say, when Nora wrote her fate, she rewrote the fates of the many after her. I would like to believe that. It’s soothing. 

It balms my soul. 

It’s true, there have been many Nora(s) after you.
Noras have been evolving, mutating, and even self-mutilating. In a perfect blend of fragility and helplessness.

Prowling thirty stores in six malls to find the perfect cocktail dress, wandering through life shackled to a shopping bag, with the primal agenda of looking pretty. We Noras are still finding ways to wear joy, away for the male gaze, but in the same breath, we all secretly desire altered versions of pretty perfect us. 

We play to the gaze, emancipated, in our little black dress with accentuated padded curves and concealed upper arm fat, abused ankles & bruised ego.

And, again and again and again, we are taught the mantra:

Exercise in the morning.
Eat when hungry.
Avoid sugar. Diet. Purge.
Conceal that blemish.
Wax. Bleach.

Exercise in the morning.
Eat when hungry.
Avoid sugar. Diet. Purge.
Conceal that blemish.
Wax. Bleach.

Exercise in the morning.
Eat when hungry.
Avoid sugar. Diet. Purge.
Conceal that blemish.
Wax. Bleach.
And, if it all doesn’t help…… just SPANX IT all in.

”We all aren’t playing to the gaze.”, you say sheepishly.

Yours faithfully, Me