Valley teen’s powerful monologue goes viral, inspires many
May 29, 2017, 7:22 AM
A teacher from Queen Creek Middle School asked his students to perform a monologue as part of their end-of-year assignment. One student’s performance in which she questions whether she’s “good enough” stood out.
Olivia Vella blew many away with her monologue. In it, she talks about the insecurities and desires to be popular that she and other teenagers face.
“As you gaze into the bathroom mirror, you see a stranger that somehow stole your reflection and replaced it with a completely different girl,” the 13-year-old says in her monologue. “Every part of your outfit is uncomfortable. But even though you spent hours trying to look pretty, you will never be as good as those other girls at school.”
A video of her performance was posted on the school’s Facebook page last week. It quickly got people’s attention. It now has more than 14 million views and thousands of comments. Some people describe her monologue as “gut wrenching” and “incredibly powerful.”
Vella told KTAR that she wrote the monologue hoping it would help “release some of the sickening feelings that I go through every day.” She never expected the video to go viral.
She also didn’t expect the reaction she got from her peers at school. She said several students, including some she didn’t know, came up to her in the halls and at lunch to let her know they felt the same way she did.
“It almost brought me to tears, because I wasn’t alone,” she said. “All these other people felt the exact same way. I thought I was just alone and crazy for thinking these things. It was eye-opening that all these other people feel the exact same way.”
Vella ends her monologue by saying girls don’t need to “have skinny waists, tan skin, long silky hair, perfectly straight teeth” and “tons of makeup to look pretty.” She adds that girls need to know they are beautiful, talented, deserving of respect and, above all, “good enough.”
“The biggest thing to take away from this monologue would probably be that loving yourself will make you happier,” she told KTAR. “You don’t have to try to have everyone else like you.”
