barbara kean was a firm believer that first impressions were the best way to establish dominance. if you had them wrapped tight around your finger since the moment they dared set eyes on you, you won before they even realized there was a struggle. and that was what barbara was all about, beating others before they realized what was happening and letting them think they still have a chance. after all, they were still alive.
one of the many reasons barbara had entered her first beauty contest was to show the entire class that she was better than them. other reasons included: her parents finally looking at her with pride in their eyes instead of bittersweet resentment; having every idiot boy so intimidated they never even tried to look at her for too long for she might burn their pupils much like the sun; and impressing jim gordon.
barbara certainly had the looks: a natural blond hair that had every uncle and aunt fawning over since she was a child, the piercing stereotypical blue eyes disney princesses could only dream of, the perfect figure carefully kept thanks to a strict diet she never went overboard with. she wore her lipstick blood red and her eyeliner sharp like a blade she could use to defend herself, even though there was virtually no threat for someone like her.
the question was, did she have the attitude?
did she have ‘what it takes’?
yes, absolutely.
that’s why she won every contest she entered.
some people in the industry liked to call her a beast, and it wasn’t that much of a metaphor. the girl would sink her teeth into anyone who stood in her way and bite their jugular right off. and she’d be damned if she said she didn’t rejoice. ‘do what you love, love what you do’, right?
tabitha galavan worked as a photographer, or so she liked to say, but if you gave her a camera she wouldn’t know how to turn on the flash. when you’re as rich as the galavans are, your skills don’t matter half as much as your checks. and if lady tabitha wanted to spend her day taking mediocre pictures of hot girls, by all means, that’s what she’d do. and that’s what she did.
it was a rather interesting photoshoot. would’ve been more interesting if they hadn’t been interrupted.
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in barbara’s opinion, jim gordon had been one of the biggest mistakes of her life, among crying with mascara on and attempting to give a fuck. tabitha agreed, adding that he was too righteous (and boring) for someone who some cheap magazines (and not so cheap ones) equaled to a ghoul in modelling. barbara had never enjoyed playing nice, you see, and jim was the definition of kindness.
needless to say, it was a long, painful and messy breakup. she didn’t get out of the house in months, and vodka bottles seemed to have jim’s name plastered all around them, marking them until the pretty words that had once rolled off his tongue sounded similar to barbara’s slurs deep in her drunken haze. that night tabitha had dragged her from the living room floor to the bed and covered her from head to toe in loving kisses before whipping her until she came.
barbara remembers it fondly.
and when people called her ‘probably another shooting star’ and ‘failure of a young woman that’d wasted her teenage years, won’t last’, she made sure no one was watching when tabitha helped her beat them until they got knocked out. she imagined her parents’ faces on theirs just to spite herself even further.
one particularly boring afternoon tabitha caught a glimpse of her girlfriend's pretty gold locks in the line to get to the director’s office, and that same day when barbara came home she wrecked everything she could get her hands on. when she asked for the reason, the only answer she got was a porcelain vase thrown at the wall next to her.
but fear not, because that very night she found out: her so-called ‘bad behavior’ landed her on leave. tabitha made sure to hide the strong alcohol and hold her, at times as comfort and at others as restraint from going back to the office and showing exactly what ‘bad behavior’ could be.
tabitha had always been proud of her attitude, but if they wanted to take them down this wasn’t the way to go. she ran her fingers through her hair murmuring promises she fully intended to keep in the shell of her ear, and just as the sun was threatening to come up, they fell asleep.
and oh, she kept them.
few weeks later, they were headlining every newspaper in gotham.
barbara found she liked the feeling.