Milk Teeth

by Amrita Mahale

He had seen it first-hand in college. There had been five women in his class of two hundred. If a male student struggled in a course, either he was called a duffer or the subject itself was declared too hard. If one of the women did, the class would gleefully conclude that what they had heard about females was true: they were no good at the fundamentals of mathematics and science, their presence in the midst of geniuses was an aberration.

When you looked at yourself, you saw a tangle of fiction and feeling. You only began to make sense under the lingering gaze of another.