There's Something About Mira

by Sonali Dev

but you do not understand the meaning of equality if you can see a difference between us. Why do you think humans need to use all these scales to gauge our worth when we all drop onto the earth from a birth canal in exactly the same state and return to dirt that crumbles beneath our feet and feeds the roots of plants in exactly the same way too? How can something as transient as money define our equality? Our opportunities, yes. Our possessions definitely, but certainly not how equal we are in any sense that is human. How can there be equality and inequality between things that are one and the same?

I think I know now why a woman who looks and acts nothing like anyone we know, let alone us ourselves, would feel so familiar. It’s because what she is on the outside keeps everyone from paying any attention to who she is on the inside. To everyone who looks upon her, especially men, she is a shell inside which they can place whatever they want to believe. I think it’s an experience all women relate to. Because of the way we’re made on the outside, we’ve already been told who we are on the inside: what we can think, what we can do. Our shells, our bodies, they are vessels they have stuffed with their own beliefs. They’ve decided for us who we are. Who we actually are seems of