For Girls Everywhere. This one is for you.

You do not own me.

Just because I am a woman.

You don’t have rights to any part of me.

Because I AM a woman.

I don’t remember signing a contract at birth that confined me to your world’s ideas and thoughts of who I was supposed to be.

Simply because I AM a woman.

You don’t get to label me.

Or try to find the right words that you believe describe me and who I choose to be.

I am over trying to fit into your perfect check list of boxes that I am forced to conform to.

When did I agree to remain silent on issues that mattered because I forfeited my rights to speak because I was a woman?

When did I agree to this life of oppression because of the way that I was born?

When did I agree to this life of hatred all because I want to stay true to who I am?

I look around me.

At the faces that judge me.

At the faces that beg me to define myself in a scientific way with words that are taken from an oxford English dictionary.

With evidence and proof.

In an educated manor because if I don’t, what is the point in listening to HER anyways.

Right?

I stop and ask myself, “What is it about me? Is it my hair? Too untamed and wild? Does it bother them that it doesn’t lay down perfectly and blow in the direction of the wind?

Is it my skin?

I know I laid a little too long out in the sun and it is darker than it usually is, but is that something that I should be ashamed of?”

I open my mouth to protest but I think twice about doing so because I am afraid that it will reveal too much about me as soon as I can’t find the right language to declare my innocence to them as they throw stones of stereotypes and aggression at me about what they believe me to be?

“Yes, I am a woman!” I want to scream.

But I was once a girl.

Who knows how it feels to be devoured by the world and spit back up to be “perfect”.

Less I forget my mama’s prayers.

And how she stayed up all night after she learned that she was pregnant with a baby girl.

A life sentence she didn’t know how to erase for me.

Where was my defense?

Where was my trial?

My mama, she prayed and prayed.

She knew all too well what it was like.

What will the world throw your way my sweet angel?

What will it do to make your forget your dreams?

Make you forget who you are.

How will it mold you to be exactly what they want you to be?

And how many times will it tell you that you can’t.

She would cry.

She knew what it was like to be a woman in this world.

And so she prayed for her baby to look nothing like her.

She knew of the troubles that I would face in the world if I spoke like her, had hair like her, she was even worried about the color of my eyes.

Would they reveal too much about me to my oppressors?

To those who were ready to take advantage of me?

She believed that being a woman was the worst life sentence that anyone can have.

And why shouldn’t it be?

This world is ready to take young girls and tell them that being a woman is a bad thing.

A word that they should be scared to even mumble when it comes out of their mouths.

That their opinions don’t matter.

That their dreams will never come true.

We fight and we fight and yet here we still are today.

Taking punches they say we shouldn’t be able to take because we are woman.

They take our daughters from our wombs and they shape them to be compliant.

Shape them to be silent.

Shape them to be more like them.

Because being a woman still comes with this life sentence where we must prove ourselves to be anything but woman.

Woman.

Women. Plural.

A woman is defined as the following:

An adult human female.

Synonyms: lady, girl, female.

More: A female worker or employee.

A wife, girlfriend, or lover.

"He wondered whether Billy had his woman with him."

Synonyms: girlfriend, sweetheart, partner, significant other, inamorata, lover, and mistress.

Where does it end?

I don’t remember accepting this definition.

I don’t remember agreeing this to be all that I am.

I DON’T REMEMBER TELLING THE WORLD THAT I AM A BELONGING.

That I need to be a wife, girlfriend, or lover?

It only gets worse from there.

Check the internet definitions.

Check the dictionaries.

But why does it have to only get worse?

Where are the definitions that say woman are strong?

Independent!

A force to be reckoned with!

How about smart, intelligent, wise, and able!

Hardworking, great, amazing, unique!

That women can be whatever they CHOOSE to be?

I am tired of serving this sentence and having to prove that I am someone.

Not just something.

Not just a belonging.

Not just an insult.

I don’t want to be ashamed anymore.

Worried about what they will think of me if I stand up and defend myself in court and ask me if I provoked them because my skirt was a little too short.

I want to stand up and scream until my throat is so course from shouting, “NO! It is not my fault!

I will not be ashamed for who I AM!”

I AM A WOMAN.

And I will always stand up for the things that I believe in.

I will not be scared to speak up because of what I am afraid they will say about me.

I will not be just another statistic in your attempt to manage us.

I will not fit into your boxes of who you think I am.

I will not conform to your ideas of beauty.

I will not be afraid to dress the way I want too.

I will not limit myself to the things that you think I can do.

I will not teach other girls to conform to the images in the media of what your ideal woman looks like.

I will not be tamed.

I will not be silent.

I will not be anything less than what I CHOOSE to be.

And what I choose to be is a woman.

A proud and angry woman.

Because things need to change.