Redefining teen girl taste isn’t going to tear down the patriarchy, but it sure will leave a dent.

It is important for me to make sense of who and where I come from, so that I may be more thoughtful in how I treat others and live my life now. I’m not here to scold anyone out of asking the next person they meet, “What are you?” But, remember that human beings are not a “what.” We are a “who.” And, we may still be figuring out just who we are.

Time and time again, Black women have shown that they can carry not only their families but the world on their shoulders. And Mimi and my mom do that in their very own kitchen. 

Even when the apology is really strong - the victim’s voice is heard and statements of good faith, growth and forgiveness, are laid out - we’re applauding a former abuser for a rhetorically effective apology. We risk giving perpetrators a second chance to hurt people just because we think it’s unfair to strip “good” guys of their title, one they “earned” without doing any real work in the first place. We treat women as collateral damage in the coming of age stories of “otherwise good” men.

I ignored my passion for writing because I did not think it would take me anywhere. I thought about what kind of stable careers would help me live a comfortable lifestyle during my middle school years. Writing was not that career.

“Drive was an indicator of what was to come: a rock-based musical sound, cryptic yet accessible lyrics, and catchy melodies.”

Following drag performers has inspired me to do anything I want with my look, regardless of whether some influencer thinks it’s chic. Sometimes that means wearing glossy pink eyeshadow to Target, sometimes it means looking like an extra in an 80s movie, and sometimes it means dying my hair green to look like a swamp creature.

I remember I spent a lot of time hoping nobody would notice that I was Black. This is a side effect of youth: a profound, exhaustive need to be liked. I did not want anybody to realize I was Black—or that I liked One Direction, or that my favorite color was pink—because I wanted  badly to be liked.

I found myself with even more questions. Am I American, even when I’ve never felt fully American? Or am I Mexican, even when I’ve never felt fully Mexican? Am I Mexican Indigenous, even when I don’t know what that means? It’s like looking in a mirror and being faced with different personas, not knowing which one is the real you.

I always knew I was different from my dance mates. I was a shy child and would rather nail steps down than waste time with the girls in the back row. I was the polite exemplar student, who got a break from doing planks because "Sanai is the only one who behaves!" Despite all this, I never got to stand in the front row. When the dance studio owner would peek into class, she never complimented me, never told me my kicks looked great, like she did Anna, Madeline, and Jessica.

A Gen-Z guide to the American election

An exploration of the state of many refugees residing in Lebanon, how the deadly Beirut explosion has affected them, and what is being done to help.

“Natural is a charged term. The hatred women face as a result of natural hair, a bare face, the shape of our bodies comes from the fact that femininity is a performance in a way that masculinity never will be. When we are natural, we are warned to touch up and get back on stage. Yet, at the same time, our performance of femininity is used as an excuse to treat us as inferiors.”

“These poems are raw enough to connect us to our most base fears and desires. Things that, as humans, we should have the right to explore more.”

“Those last three minutes in the film are the most memorable to me but not for the reason you might think. Not because of the iconic aesthetic, but rather the image of a young man realizing at his fireplace that he has been used.”

“Intersectionality isn’t just the best way forward for the environmental justice movement - it is the only way forward.”

“It is easy to think from our position in the UK that we have somehow overcome such structural racism. We do not experience the same rates of mass incarceration, but this is because history played out differently – although still far from innocently - in the UK after the abolition of slavery, and racist structures endure in different forms.”

“Beauty cannot exist without ugliness the same way white people did not exist before black people did, the same way nothing makes a man apart from him being not a woman. In The Power, Naomi Alderman writes that ‘Gender is a shell game. What is a man? Whatever a woman isn’t. What is a woman? Whatever a man is not. Tap on it and it’s hollow, Look under the shells: it’s not there.’”

“It’s my job to learn what those missing pieces are. That is the only way I can fight them. As white people, we need to overcome the defense mechanism that makes the phrase “I’m not racist” jump to our throats. The one that encourages us to feel good about being “not racist” even though “not racist” requires no real action, it’s inherently an absence of action. The one that allows us to take a seat without first taking on the system.”