Scholastic Award Winner: The Goddess of Beauty: Miranda Chen

The Goddess of Beauty: Miranda Chen

Silver Key in Flash Fiction

By Richard
Grade 10

The mirror used to be my friend. Now it’s my sanctuary, my confession booth, my prison.

“Miranda Chen stuns at Milan Fashion Week!” The headlines blare. “Her ageless beauty continues to dominate the runway at forty-three!”

Forty-three. They used to never mention my age. Now they weaponize it like a miracle.

I trace the perfect curve of my newly sculpted cheekbones. The surgeon was an artist. He promised to make me timeless. Just like he promised last month with my jaw. And the month before with my eyes. And the week before that with my nose. The calendar in my phone is a constellation of appointments, each one a promise to erase another piece of the woman I used to be.

“How does she do it?” The younger models whisper backstage, their natural faces glowing with youth I can only manufacture. “She looks younger than she did twenty years ago!”

Younger. Yes. Different. Yes. But better?

In my private moments, I catch myself searching old magazines, touching the glossy pages of my former face. There I am at twenty, selling Nike’s dream in my mother’s cheekbones and my father’s eyes. There I am at twenty-five, a Prada angel with my grandmother’s smile. A smile I killed three surgeries ago.

The cameras flash as I stride down the runway. My new lips, full and perfect, curve into the smile they expect. The smile I practiced in the mirror until the stitches healed, until I could almost convince myself it belonged to me.

“You’ve knocked Adriana Peters off the top spot!” My agent gushes through the phone. “The nineteen-year-old sensation didn’t stand a chance. You’re proof that women like you will forever be beautiful!”

But AM I beautiful or is it the surgeries that make me beautiful? Whose face? Whose life am I living now?

At night, I dream of peeling back my skin like wallpaper, layer by layer of surgical perfection, searching for the innocent girl who once graced magazine covers with nothing but genetics and grace. But under each layer is another stranger, another version of perfection I bought and paid for, until I wake up screaming, unsure if there’s anything left of me beneath it all.

“Miranda, darling, you must tell us your secret!” The talk show host leans in, hungry for answers. “You’re absolutely GLOWING!”

My enhanced features arrange themselves into the perfect expression of modest joy. “Clean living, dieting, and plenty of exercise!” I lie, feeling the fresh bandages hidden beneath my designer dress. “And good genes.”

But what genes? I’ve carved them all away, sold them to the highest bidder, replaced them with silicon dreams and borrowed beauty.

The magazines call me a miracle. A testament to modern beauty. They splash my photos across their covers–before and after, young and younger, real and… perfect. But they never show the in-between, the bleeding, the healing, the moments I catch myself in the mirror and don’t recognize the person staring back.

Last night, I found an old photo album my mother kept. Pictures of three generations of Chen women, their features echoing through time. I traced their faces—my grandmother’s elegant nose, my mother’s high cheekbones, my once-natural lips. Features I’ve systematically erased in my quest for perfection.

In my bathroom, I stare at my reflection through tears that cost ten thousand dollars to not leave tracks. The face looking back is flawless. Ageless. Empty. I press my fingers against the cool glass, trying to feel the woman beneath the masterpiece, but she’s gone. In her place stands a collection of society’s finest work: a living, breathing testament to the power of modern medicine and ancient insecurities.

Who am I?

The mirror offers no answers, just endless reflections of a woman I bought piece by piece. Sometimes, in the darkest hours of the night, I swear I can see her—the real Miranda—trapped behind the glass, banging silently against this prison of perfection I’ve built around her.

Come back, she seems to beg. Come back to yourself.

But I don’t know how. I am a masterpiece of modern engineering, a triumph of human will over nature’s design. I am eternally young, eternally beautiful, eternally…

LOST.

Tonight, standing in my bathroom, I finally snap. My fingers—elegant, artificial—dig into the perfect flesh of my cheeks, trying to tear away this mask, to find the real Miranda underneath. I claw deeper, harder, frantic to find something authentic beneath the surface.

But there’s no blood.

No pain.

Just the soft, hollow sound of plastic scraping against plastic.