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All the ugly girls want to be in Playboy. And maybe we should let 'em. Because there's always someone who'll find 'em pretty. We'll just put all of them out there, stark naked, a thousand-page catalog of awkward flesh and bony juts, and whoever can look at them and get a certain stirring can send in pictures of himself naked, and maybe he'll be butt-ugly too, but maybe she won't think that, and there'll be an ugly love connection made. Even the girl with the most misshapen, tiny tits, cottage-cheese thighs, weed-whacker hair, thin lips, with zits on her face and black hairs on her ass, someone's gonna look at something on her, maybe her nose, and think that she's at least a little bit pretty. But me, I'm not the one to do it. I think they're all pretty. Until they open their mouths. And then some of them are more pretty and some of them just get ugly.
 

All the pretty girls think it's degrading to pose for Playboy, maybe because they're offended they haven't been asked yet, or maybe because they've been hit on a few too many times, and I can understand that attitude. ^[1] But there's nothing prettier than a pretty girl who don't know she's pretty, or who knows and don't care. And I have never looked at a girl in Playboy and fallen in love, and I would like to someday. And I guess that there have been a number of pretty girls who have posed for Playboy, but I bet they all thought it was degrading, and if they didn't, that's just because they were too stupid to know it was degrading, because it is degrading--but it's pretty cool, too.
 

I want a girl like Patti Smith, who thinks posing for Playboy is cool. I want a girl who will love me for my big, ugly gut. I kind of want to stop thinking every girl is pretty, because it makes it hard to walk around on sunny days, you know what I mean? I want to kiss every ugly girl I see, and take them on romantic dates, and find some pretty boy and zap them with a special plasma gun that lets him see how pretty the girl is, to see how she gets prettier when she laughs, or smiles, or lights up a cigarette.
 

I've got a girl like all that, a very pretty girl, and I just want to go to sleep next to her, but I can't, so I'll play my guitar and wait some more, and write songs about pretty girls.
 

mwirth: This is a fun piece. I like the kind of contradictory bits, like when the narrator goes on about how it's degrading to pose for Playboy, but suddenly says it's pretty cool too. It makes the narrator seem very human. The last stanza didn't have that unexpected feel for me- but you need some way to conclude the piece, and I can't think of any better suggestions. I guess I'd just recommend playing up that element of surprise, the little twists in the stream of consciousness throughout the piece. tasha: I would be your groupie 4-evah if this became a song. I enjoy and concur with the thoughts - maybe just a bit more clarity/sharpness/connectivity between them. The ending is sweet...but at the moment it feels a little too seperated from the rest. If yer thinking about girls 'cuz you miss yours, a little more allusion to that would be good in the rest of the piece, even if it's not direct. cgroom: This might be bit off the track of where you were going, but the question that pops into my head is, why do we let playboy be the gatekeepers of defining pretty? Part of the issue (and, yes, this is by no means a new point) is that we don't see thousands and thousands of photos of everyone naked, just a very set few. It boggles the mind what seeing a true cross-section would do to anyone's sense of "type." Anyways... I like this piece. If there's any way to make it more specific about something that's happened, or a specific daydream within it, that would make it even better. Add comment