Free Put Your Diamonds Up! by Ni-Ni Simone Page A

do away with this camel hump. I need to do damage control. The sooner we get all this removed, the more shows I’m sure you’ll book.”
    I fought the urge to grimace. I was so tempted to smash an egg in her flawless face and tell her how I’d recently read in Teen Runway Fashionista that just as the days of thin, nearly nonexistent lips were long gone, so too were flat-back, invisible booties. Just as they looked for full, pouty, ethnic lips, designers were now craving models that had a little more junk in the trunk. But somehow I figured it didn’t matter to her what the fashionistas in the teen world had to say about it. As far as she was concerned, my plump rump was a hindrance. A distraction. A liability.
    And she wanted it gone!
    I eyed her questioningly, shifting my weight from one foot to the other. I folded my arms.
    Three years ago, she wanted to drag me off to Mexico to have me infected with a tapeworm—a procedure illegal in the U.S. The year after that, she wanted me to have my jaw wired. Then, last summer, she wanted to have a hard plastic mesh sewn onto my tongue for a month with fishing line as sutures—some crazy weight-loss procedure started somewhere over in Latin America that some nutty whack job cosmetic surgeon brought back to the States—knowing damn well it would be extremely painful if I tried to eat anything.
    And now this!
    I stepped away from her and the three-panel mirror, slipping back into my robe. “I’m doing every thing you ask of me, Mother. IV therapies. Colonics. Wheatgrass smoothies. Belly wraps. Master Cleanses. But surgeries . . . ” I shook my head. “No. That is one of your crazy plans I am not doing. My butt and my breasts stay.”
    She huffed. “The breasts we can work around, but that backside of yours, not so much. I fear your work in the industry will be limited to print ads. And . . .” she paused, shaking her head. “At some point, plus-size fashions.”
    I rolled my eyes. “Well, what difference does it make if I’m modeling print ads or end up a plus-size model? It’s still modeling, isn’t it? That is what you’ve wanted, right ? Me modeling?”
    She frowned. “What kind of foolish question is that? Of course I want you modeling. As a high-fashion model, London, not traipsing around on some disastrous cattle circuit for Ashley Stewart or Lane Bryant.”
    â€œI am not doing it, Mother. And you can’t make me.” I eyed her sternly for emphasis, placing a hand on my hip. She might have been able to control my trust fund and dictate where I lived; she might have monitored my weight and bullied her way into my personal life and directed who I dated and stayed friends with. But she was not going to make me have plastic surgery. She’d taken enough away from me already!
    It was too early in the morning for this. And I had a mother I couldn’t even talk to. All I wanted to do was stay curled up in bed with my head beneath my covers. I wanted to sleep away the rest of my time here on this earth. Pretending to be happy with my new forced life was beginning to wear the edges of my nerves thin.
    And I wasn’t up for being pinned and prodded and shouted at and shoved and critiqued by a group of bubblehead assistants and demanding designers. No. I wasn’t up for it. Not today. The idea of keeping up with the farce for appearance’s sake 24/7 was becoming too much to bear. I was homesick.
    Lovesick.
    And sick and tired of being sick.
    Everything was slowly crashing down around me.
    Ain’t no body checkin’ for ya . . . but me . . . and I don’t even know why I eff wit’ you . . . I feel sorry for you . . .
    I blinked back tears, recalling my argument with my mother earlier this morning. “You say you love all of me? Yeah, okay. Whatever! I can’t tell. And I can’t wait to see just how much you and your uppity fashion houses really love me