I had snark! I had independence! I had romance, but not the icky squishy kind; it was love where the woman could still be her brave, action sheroe self. I thought this was it. This is the goal. This is what I have been waiting to read and have access to read all my life. And honestly, I still love those authors. I comfort read their books, and I am always searching for authors like them. It is all AMAZING work. But. They are not my unicorn treasures.
Because you begin to unconsciously absorb what the ‘important’ people look like. What they sound like. What they think like. Your vision of the ‘right world’ and the ‘right culture’ is shaped by people who seem to not even know or probably care that you exist. Your subconscious begins to be unwittingly shaped into a very colonial controlled space.