Caro || Issue 1

I know that the manic-pixie-dream-girl trope isn't seen as
very feminist but you have to understand that-to reference
Kerry Washington- it's not often that we as Black women get
to be seen as beautiful, delicate, eccentric, otherworldly,
and fey, even when we have those traits! So it's a step up
for me to even be considered a MPDG, you know?
There’s this...feminine persona that is widely appreciated
and I see that it’s a part me a part of who I am. I identify
with that narrative. But I also realize that few others
see this persona in me, the way I do. I caught and still
sometimes catch myself trying to massage away the aspects
of myself that stopped others from seeing the manic pixie
dream girl in me (my fatness, my blackness). I remember
walking in this park in my town after I'd gotten off work
and it was the perfect place to do a photo shoot. I was
seeing myself in different dresses and poses and honestly?
It was a lot of stuff that, I felt (feel) would never happen,
and even if it did it wouldn't look the way I planned
and would basically be an utter failure and I would be a
pitiable laughing stock. Not because the visual concepts
were shitty, but because I was too fat, too black, and too
broke to ever pull it off. And it just dropped into my mind
that I never got the chance to be the girl I wanted to be.
I’ve been using the phrase “the girl I am and the girl you
want me to be" over and over for the last few years, and I
finally understood what I myself meant by that. Between the
girl I am and the girl you--whoever “you” is; my mother, my
family, society at large--want me to be, I never got to be
the girl I wanted to be and... That was a hard revelation,
you know? I'm 25, I never got to be the girl I wanted to
be, and now that chance is completely gone. It hurt. I managed
not to cry but only just. That revelation felt like an
important part of my had died. After a while of trying to
keep my composure, I just thought, "Well, what about the
woman you want to be?" And I had to resign myself, you
know, and about face. That point in my life is gone and it
6