And I wanted to set up a hierarchy where she thought being the best and being chosen as the best would be the thing that she would want the most. I wanted to write a girl who was very ambitious and didn’t always know everything but felt like she did, and wanted to take risks. I wanted to talk about a world where if you could change yourself down to your bones, what would it be like and what could you do?Ĭamillia is part of “The Belles.” How did you come up with that aspect of the book? I write about things that bother me and this is something that Teenage Me was very bothered by: my body, it’s limitations, and why it didn’t look like magazines. All these things that I really loved that I wished I could have. Like body parts, hair textures, hair shape, eye color, lips. I started cutting out pictures of beautiful people from magazines and pasting them on the wall.
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: What inspired you to tell this story?ĭHONIELLE CLAYTON: When I was a preteen I went through this stage where I was obsessed with magazines.
