I confess to not having read YA in many years, and I’m probably dating myself here, but two of my favorite books as an adolescent were ‘Are you there God, it’s me Margaret’ and ‘A Ripple in Time’. Both with somewhat awkward, but extremely smart protagonists who stressed out about their looks and desperately desired femininity while also going on a journey of existential angst and a little bit of saving the world thrown in.

I saw myself in them, because I vacillated between wanting to be the feminine girl in school and a desire to kick ass and take names. At that time, the only person I saw in media who did both was Wonder Woman.

I believe it highlights the dichotomy many girls and grown women face, wanting to embrace their feminine nature but worried about getting too much attention for it. So sometimes, we embrace more of our masculine in order to be respected and get a seat at the table…