I often hear black girls complain that their hair is difficult to control, and it’s precisely because we are not meant to control it.

I have always found that jeans hurt my body with waistlines digging into my stomach as I try to exhale.

T shirts that cut into my arms, bras that dig into my flesh leaving scars that remain today.

We were not the architects of this system, of course these things won’t fit us when they come from people who refuse to acknowledge that we exist. We know this because we see their runways, their print ads, their magazines. We are not wrong.

Beige is not the definition of ‘nude’, my hair does not need to be restrained, it needs to be liberated. My hair isn’t so thick, I didn’t go through puberty too early, my mama is not ‘plus sized’ - these statement all use an invented standard of whiteness and then define me in relation to that standard.

Fuck mainstream. Fuck counter culture and sub culture. We are our own mainstream. We are our own culture.

Fuck standards and constructions of normal. Nothing ever grew by being measured. We grow by being nurtured and affirmed for who we are as we are. Standards are always relative.