In school, they would tell you that life wouldn’t come to you; you had to go out and make it your own. But when it came to love, the message for girls seemed to be this: Don’t. Don’t go after what you want. Wait. Wait to be chosen, as if only in the eye of another could one truly find value. The message was confusing and infuriating. It was a shell game with no actual pea under the rapidly moving cups.

I know because I read. Might I suggest you try it?

We create the illusions we need to go on.

This is the world we live in, Gemma, for better or for worse. Make of it what you can," he says, and I pull him to me.

Scoring well on tests is the sort of happy thing that gets the school district the greenbacks they crave. Understanding and appreciating the material are secondary.

I've had so many bikini waxes, I cry every time I see a Popsicle stick.

So much of the literature we had to read for high school English class was filled with victimized, tragic, symbolic women who spurred the plot forward with their inevitable shunning/death/shunning-followed-by-pregnancy-followed-by-death timelines.