A/N: Kate Nash's "Girl Talk" album helped me write this, but a line from "Sex Yeah" by Marina and the Diamonds inspired this whole thing.
She grew up being expected to adhere to the standards of those around her.
"You're taking ballet. It builds character. Besides, it's normal for girls your age to take up dance," her mother had said when she was five and fascinated by electric guitars. To this day, she didn't benefit at all from it. She only learned how to embarrass herself during a Swan Lake recital.
"Girls shouldn't fight. A young lady like you ought to be classy," she had been told by her principal in third grade. She had been reading on the playground when a stupid boy kicked mulch in her face and yelled she how was "the weirdest girl he'd ever met." Jen still applauded her to this day for punching him in the face and kicking mulch at him when he was down. He was the weakest boy she'd ever met.
"You're just a bitch, Nikki," the guy she thought she liked in middle school had said while they were on a date at the movies. But, then again, she was totally a bitch for having thrown her soda in his face after he had tried to fondle her. Because it was her fault he couldn't control himself. Totally.
"Why do you insist on letting her dress like that? Normal girls don't wear cargo pants and whatnot everyday," her forever judgmental aunt had told her parents at a family dinner sometime during her freshman year of high school. That was the night her parents had openly defended her style. They'd said she could dress however she liked, however she wanted to express herself.
"Whoa," her friends had said days before the start of sophomore year. Her long, black hair had been cut off in favor of chin-length purple hair, letting go of what people had told her in previous years, letting go of what people would tell her in days to come. Her nose, eyebrows, and ears had been newly pierced, the only sharp things she would ever allow to get under her skin.
All her life, she had been told who to be. She had been told to be pretty. She had been told to be a lady. She had been told that she couldn't be smart and attractive anyway. She had been told she wasn't an ordinary girl for the wrong reasons. But the day she reinvented herself was the day she shouted a loud fuck you to those daring to call her anything outside her name, daring to insult her intelligence, daring to make a fool of her. She didn't need to be told anything.
Because she would no longer be listening.