Why, when men hate themselves, it’s women who take the beatings.

We were just a hair's breadth from electing America's first female president to succeed America's first black president. We weren't done, but we were doing it. And then, true to form-like the Balrog's whip catching Gandalf by his little gray bootie, like the husband in a Lifetime movie hissing, 'If I can't have you, no one can'-white American voters shoved an incompetent, racist con man into the White House.

So no, excuse me, we will not play likability anymore. It's an endless runner—a game with no progress and no finish line—that women are expected to chase, that keeps us from doing the real work, accruing the real power. Chasing likability has been one of women's biggest setbacks, by design. I don't know that rejecting likability will get us anywhere, but I know that embracing it has gotten us nowhere.

But they tell you that if you hate yourself hard enough, you can grab just a tail feather or two of perfection. Chasing perfection was your duty and your birthright, as a woman, and I would never know what it was like—this thing, this most important thing for girls.

Abortion is normal, it's okay to be fat and women don't have to be nice to you.