Dear Society,

Please stop fetishizing us. In a world full of norms that we feel pressured to conform to, help us squash the myths. As little girls that grow into women we spend a lot of time getting pushed and prodded into metaphorical boxes and slapped with so many different labels we might as well be a package from Amazon for Halloween. Social perceptions and mass generalizations of groups of people is nothing new, but it’s frustrating having to prove to someone everything you aren’t before you can show them everything you are.

White women aren’t all ditzy, shallow, entitled and promiscuous. Black women aren’t all angry, bitter, loud and over-sexualized. Not every Asian woman is a submissive individual longing to be infantilized and dress up in school girl uniforms while making high pitched giggling noises. Every Middle Eastern woman isn’t oppressed. Not all Hispanic women are feisty sexpots who curse at you in Spanish when she’s angry. Short girls aren’t cuddlier and fat girls won’t treat you better.

We are allowed to be atypical without explaining why we don’t fit in. We shouldn’t have to shrink, chat less, chat more, dance different, walk different, or talk differently just so we don’t feel like we’re feeding the beast and fueling stereotypes. We understand it’s difficult — T.V shows, song lyrics and music videos help perpetuate all of these ideas of what it means to be a woman. You have tons of people that aren’t women defining what femininity is supposed to look like, sound like and even smell like. So much so that even we believe it. We are just bit characters reading our lines and stepping into our roll. Even when we try to take our femininity into our own hands there is always someone or something there to remind you what it is that women can and cannot do.

While much of this is not ill-intentioned or malicious, it is what it is and gender stereotypes do more breaking us down then building us up. So please, I beg some of you to stop fetishizing us. Please stop informing us of all the things that you think we should be and all the things you’re surprised that we are not. We should be able to grow and blossom into whatever we please without spending years undoing and re-teaching ourselves that it is all right and our right to just exist.