My girl is in third grade. She likes Ramona quimby and horses. She secretly still likes and plays barbies.  She is embarrassed when her dad hugs her for fear he'll feel her bra strap.  She is afraid if she looks men in the eye they will feel something and think sexually about her. She has a flower comforter that she got for her birthday and it matches her wallpaper. The pattern makes her feel safe and at home. She felt like her room was pretty, but also she felt the glare, pressure and judgement of girls whose parents had money and lived in perfect laura Ashley or benenton bedrooms. Those girls who were her supposed friends seemed so carefree and beautiful. Perhaps they were not aware that they "set the standard," led the show. My girl remembered when she had a stain on her shirt and it was a shirt she wore a lot to school and hoped know one noticed. One of those perfect girls made sure to mention the stain and left my girl in shame. It was a competition. My girl copied how those other girls wore their gap shirts with the tag out purposely so everyone could see where it was from.
Every girl has an individual walk and with that walk, a soundtrack that skips and plays and bounces with their every step. Every girl grows up knowing they are special in some way deep inside, even if they never know how to share or show that glimmer shimmer deep inside themselves to anyone else comfortably. It is still inside of them and fills them with light and that light makes their life soundtrack. This soundtrack is all about them, it is their movie, their diary, their inner glamour star. That glimmer shimmer in them reflects everything that they are. It has splits and contradictions and looks like different girls lives at times, but really it is one cohesive story soundtrack that runs and runs and is inclusive of all the other girls within that original girl, and all the variation of girls that will come in time.
Imagine a paper doll. Starts off as one but unfolds to be many many, but they are all connected and ultimately fold easily back together to be one. The paper doll can stretch its arms out and hold hands with all its other girls and they will all still be there, extending from the core. They unfold and grow and allow for new girls and transformation.
She lives in diamond towers, you'll never know her name but she'll buy you flowers. welcome to her little world, it goes round and round with alittle twirl. Every girl is a paper doll. She starts off small but her core keeps unfolding into numerous charactors and extended dolls which reflect every bit of her. She has many different faces.
It makes it hard to tell the truth or know the truth, what is real or concrete when there are so many me's extended from me, out to the world. Perhaps it is time to pull all the girls back in for awhile. Take off the lipstick and put away the smiles, frowns, rigid jaw, glaring eyes, alert breasts, plump lips and cigarettes. Perhaps she should pull and tuck all those girls back in, one by one lovingly, fold and tuck and hold them inside for a little while. Let them be inside for a little while and get to know all those girls better, learn and memorize their diary, movies, soundtrack before letting the outside world hecklers have at it with their vampire chomping jaws of judgement and energy hunger zap. Pull them in and feel them flicker and zib zab down the throat where they stay nested.

Perhaps over time all the soundtracks and diaries and bedrooms of my girl begin to have similarities, and if you cared enough, were crazy enough, you could see the little details and tidbits, the themes which lead each girl in each bedroom back to the core girl in her original flower bedroom in third grade.  All of the paper dolls were simply reflections and energies related and learned from the other. Perhaps some of the paper doll girls were created as a way to find acceptance inside themselves, as a way to let one of the girls inside them shine to others. Perhaps new dolls unfolded cos the core doll felt confined in what she had created and recreated and over and over of herself. perhaps the core doll felt they and others were unable to accept, see or register these new talents, feelings and ideals which were bursting and melting out of their core, so out stepped a new paper doll, and soon there was an army, hands all linked. The army stood and fought for one girl but reflected and identified with so many. They were everything and one. The army of paper dolls held several girls living inside one bedroom. Some girls wanted to be seen and others hid.
            What do your paper doll girls look like? Maybe they aren't girls at all or any gender. What are the walls of your dolls bedroom like? What is their movie soundtrack diary like? Why did they become who they are and like what they like? Which dolls are they embarrassed or ashamed to accept, which parts do they act out or access in secret? Which parts are their very own special secret?
Oh paper doll girl, let yourself unfold, but do so slowly and hatch and molt and birth with tedious contemplation and unify and know well each doll that is born!