When I was a little girl, Halloween was one of my favorite holidays. Not just because being born in October meant it was more like a second birthday, but because on Halloween, I could be anyone or anything I wanted. Obviously, that’s what every little kid loves about that weird, mildly extortionist holiday. I wasn’t exactly the average little kid, though. By the time I was 6 years old, I was already conscious of the differences between my body and those of my classmates. I looked nothing like the other girls in my class or at church. It made more than a huge difference.

I was tall, with a dash of pudge and a scoop of strength. Oh, and a temper like no other. A healthy recipe for a precocious 1st grader with precious few friends. So yeah, I relished any opportunity to not be me -- to try again.

I gave up pretty quickly on princess costumes, despite my abiding love for all things bejeweled and beribboned. I was certain, at that age anyway, that princesses didn’t look like me. Instead I chose things like witches and vikings. Strong things. Sturdy things. Things more like me than other things I could have tried to be.

Then, one year, I caught my first glimpse of a Halloween costume magazine and there she was. On the front cover. With her broad shoulders, big hands, corded arms, stacked thighs and calves, big feet. She was amazing. She was, well, wonderful.

The advert had used a comic book illustration to promote its women’s and children’s sizes and I flipped eagerly to the page she was supposed to be on. However, when I found it, the women and girls in her clothes were small, dainty and delicate. I was heartbroken. They were so beautiful, but they weren’t her. Still, I wanted the costume. I wanted to be Wonder Woman more than anything.

I showed the page to my mom, begging and pleading like a champ. She hemmed and hawed, saying something to the effect of maybe when you’ve thinned out a little, I think the skirt would be too skimpy in your size. She wasn’t trying to hurt me, not in the least, but I remember slipping the page into my pocket and going quietly to my room, refusing to cry over something so small.

It wasn’t small. She wasn’t small and everyone, my mother included, wanted her to be. They wanted her to be more of a princess than a warrior. They wanted her willowy, slender and soft.

So what am I getting at, with all of this trite flashback nonsense? Well, the truth, if you don’t mind my being so on the nose.

The truth about Wonder Woman is that she is big. She is tall and strong and fierce. Oh, and beautiful. She’s a soldier and a princess, a general and a royal. She’s a hero.

Fast forward a decade or so, to my last year of high school. I’ve come a long way from drama over Halloween costumes and a long way from hating everything about myself. I’m improving, in some way, nearly every day. Then comes the news. The amazing, thrilling, wonderful news. There’s going to be a Wonder Woman movie. All about her.

Two more years slip away and into a movie theater for Batman vs. Superman, a film I mostly went to see for my hero. She had about 16 spoken lines, which wasn’t enough, but I was appeased by all the ass she kicked in the final battle while the main men were working out their ego problems on each other. I was so proud of her!

As the credits were rolling, I felt strangely sad. Was she tall, strong, fierce, beautiful? Oh, yes. Was she big? Well…

As thrilled as I had been to see my hero steal the show away from the two guys the movie was named after, I felt bereft. Where were the broad shoulders, the big hands, the corded arms, the stacked thighs and calves, the big feet? Where were those features that had made me take a long, hard look in the mirror at my own large limbs and think, if Wonder Woman looks even a little bit like me, maybe I can be a hero too.

This is not to disparage Gal Gadot at all. She did a great job. She captured the ideals, the wisdom, the strength, the brilliant ruthlessness of Wonder Woman that make the character undeniably powerful. Of course, a person can only change their body so much, so I don’t hold that against her either.

But she still fits neatly into one of the few body types that women are allowed to have on the big screen. In reality, more of us look like Wonder Woman than we do any other typical waif-like heroine. So why is there this ubiquitous refusal to portray her the way she’s meant to be?

Because she’s a threat. Well, of course she’s a physical threat, but she’s a symbolic one, too. She’s a threat to countless patriarchal institutions and ideals of female beauty and personality. She’s not small and quiet, weak and submissive. She’s big. She’s loud. She’s strong, brave and smart. She’s a leader.

She represents the dangerous idea that women are not a monolith. That women can look however they want and act however they want, by nature and by choice.

Yeah, I’ll admit, some of the Wonder Woman skirts you see in magazines are a little too skimpy for young girls. Even so, that’s a problem that can be solved with leggings and a pair of boots. So I’d like to ask any mothers, fathers, guardians, or future parents, to remind your daughter, in this world so preoccupied with delicate, tiny perfection, that no matter what size she is, she can be anything. That who she will become is not determined by the sum of her measurements, but by the strength of her character. After all, any woman is as strong as she is determined to be.

Any woman can be a hero.

“I have no idea where I’m going to be tomorrow, but I accept that tomorrow will come. And I’m going to rise to meet it.” -Donna Troy