We were raised on algorithms deciding for us, institutions claiming to know better, self-esteem culture telling us we’re already perfect exactly as we are, political movements insisting identity is predetermined by categories we were born into, and therapy language that frames every flaw as trauma rather than choice.

. I am the dirty girl who over-analyzes culture for a living because it makes her feel in control. Most people in our industry have similar rejection-based mythologies, and many have a hurt high schooler living inside of them still.

All deviations from the dominant stream of thought, that is to say, the belief in a permanent essence of woman and in an invariant but fragile identity whose loss is considered to be a specifically human danger, can easily fit into the categories of the mentally ill or the mentally underdeveloped