In 2016's progressive dating market, where there are apps for every walk of life claiming to aid those trying to fall in love, you would think girls like me would have no problem finding a hot date. College woman, generally self-sufficient (let's not quote this in front of my parents, thanks), ambitious, in shape (despite sneaky beer and pizza every other week, let a girl have her vice okay?) and attractive. And for the most part, this is true. If I really believed in the age of Tinde, I think, by now, I could've met someone seriously, and maybe the kind of fantasy happy I only imagine comes from meeting someone just as weird and imperfectly lovely as yourself. However, if there's one thing I have come across in this myriad of Internet-age love-sex-let's see apps, it's that mixed girls, biracial girls, brown girls, fall somewhere in the muck of not being enough -- or being magically too much.

Just as in the real world, where biracial girls are often challenged by two hierarchies, one of white supremacy and one of black qualification, the dating world doesn't make any different exceptions. When I swipe right on black men, they want to know if I'm actually black or not:

"Yeah but how much?"

"Well, you still look half Asian or something. I'm just asking."

"Which parent is white, again?"

And when I swipe right on white guys, the same messages just take on a different implication.

"I LOVE mixed girls."

"What's your ethnicity? Like specifically the amounts?"

"Damn, I wish you had green eyes that would be crazy hot."

Allow me to translate for you. It's either:

"You're just not black enough for me and there's nothing you can really do about that, even though if I was actually acknowledging the internal race-based structures at play, I would be smart enough to know that despite your lighter skin color, we both face adversity and discrimination in a dominantly white society. But anyways, do you like sending nudes?"

Or, it's:

"I have such a white supremacy complex from years and years of living in a community where white men have every privilege and opportunity even conceivable on a basic level that I can't actually acknowledge you as a female human, or even just a human at all, because your race is the first thing I need to talk about as it is the most important and controversial thing about your sexuality, and I already want to dominate you in a new arena because of it. But anyways, lets get drinks tomorrow night."

Trying to date as a brown girl, or any woman of any color, is already intimidating enough. I remember the years of my very ripe pubescence when I was not cute, but could never even imagine a universe where someone would love me -- not because of my catastrophic acne, tiny boobs or bad attitude -- but because I was not white. And further more, I wasn't white enough.

When I was in the fifth grade, my mom let me get my hair chemically straightened. It smelled like sour eggs, but I left feeling like a goddess with the promise of "easier" hair, "prettier" hair. By the beginning of sixth grade, I had to shave my whole head and start new because the melanin in me refused to give up and tore every strand of straight from my scalp one by one until I started looking like Angelica's doll from Rugrats. Patchy, is the kindest way to put it.

So I got older, and curlier again, and didn't actually fall in love until high school was almost over. The "truest love of my life" I would tell people. And even now, I know that I really meant it. I was vulnerable, I gave myself fully to someone. But what I also know now is that no true love of your life will ever sit with you on the curb after school, and tell you how much they like it when your hair is wavy, not curly. And they will certainly not call you their "mulatto girl," no matter how much ignorant affection they pour into the phrase.

Now I face this new dilemma. I can date anyone, any color, any race, but will they ever look at me as more than a divider for two shades? The middleman for an interracial creation? As I approach my 21st birthday, I'm sure the dating world will shift yet again, so I cautiously remind myself that whoever is lucky enough to be mine next will be so for many reasons, one of which being that they will never shame my curls, they will not giggle about my being "an Oreo," and they will not base my sexiness -- or lack thereof -- on the notion of how much my outsides look like a "latte." I am whole, I am me, and I am two things within one -- both of which make me who I am, but are not what your level of interest should ever be based upon.

Please note: As a feminist and a woman of color actively fighting for the rights of other people of color, my privileges as a mixed woman are inescapable, and I do not write this article with any attempt to raise the struggles of mixed women above other women of color. We are all fighting bloody battles. This is just an example of what one of my fists have happen to come into contact with, over and over again.