I’ve always hated heels. They are red lacquer foot coffins. Velvet torture devices in disguise. Instead of diving head first into my mother’s high heel collection like most girls at age 13, I bought my first pair of Vans, black and white checkered slip-ons with red cherries. They would be the proud first of an impressive Skate-4-Life-Can’t-Skate-To-Save-My-Life shoe collection including Converse “chucks” that my girlfriends and I used as a canvas for our teenage angst.

“I just Amazon-primed a beautiful, big, neon pink strap-on to plow my girlfriend,” I said matter of factly to my co-workers over a bowl of slightly lukewarm, but exceptionally coconut-y chicken korma in an Indian restaurant in Wyoming.

“I’ve been looking for freedom” blasted out of the Kombinat Sternradio Type R 160 model with a handy cassette deck set in a chic wooden frame and red leather case, the only radio allowed in the GDR. A few months ago, this would have been unthinkable. Rock & Roll meant resistance, anarchy, revolution, difference. The opposite of sameness.

29th Floor. ’Bing’ the pre-war elevator doors pushed open and a heavy cloud of powdery soapiness announced Mrs. Bigsby. Mrs. Bigsby used to be Mrs. Harrington. The Harrington. The grand dame of theatre. Word on the street was she killed her third husband, poisoned him with tetrodotoxin.

I’ve always had a thing for extreme temperatures, scorching hot showers, icy skinny dipping, it’s nothing to me. I enjoy it in fact. My body is not a temple. It’s a well-oiled steel machine that I use to crush toxic men’s tiny little egos. Men of all shapes and sizes from bony, meaty to walking-steroid ads for Fitness First become shadows of themselves in my presence. I am the ice queen, the boss of the video game of their lives they cannot beat. They just can’t handle it. And I love it.

Since the beginning of time, humans have moved their bodies to the rhythm of music. Dancing is freedom. But not all dancers are created equal. On a Saturday night out somewhere in Brooklyn, I dragged my body through a dark, ominous pulsating crowd of shadows. The more eyes I felt like spotlights on my body, the less it felt like my own. Something else was controlling me, pressing my buttons, instructing me how to move my limbs. I was no longer a human, I was a puppet.

I grew up in the 90’s, the era of the popstar and MTV. I was a massive Britney Spears fan. She was my icon, my role model. So naturally, I wanted to look like her, move like her, capitalize on my body just like her. This piece examines how we need more women in leadership roles to inspire girls to seek intellectual success instead of male validation when they grow up.

Imagine you lived in a place,
as safe as your mother’s womb, where you can just be.

Without rules, judgment or expectations,
Making you tip toe all your life.
Wouldn’t that be a wonderful place?

When I walk past those men, they demand: why don’t you smile, you’re so beautiful! When I walk past those men, they demand: you dropped something, bend over!

Boy meets Girl

My mother was a feminist pimp. Not figuratively. But literally. She was defined by her contradictions: an indestructible fortress of a woman with the muscle power of a man and the face of an angel: ocean eyes and a neat nose met rose-shaped lips, on display in a gold frame. A combination which didn’t exactly read, my Klitschko-fist will turn every bar fight into a game of Wack-A-Male. Judging my mother based on her appearance was as reliable as judging a book by its cover.