You explained to me that you liked girls with a little more mean on their bones, and that's why you liked me. At that time, I enjoyed your company, until the poisonous properties of your kiss made me want to spit it back out at you and the way your text messages rolled in like thunder made me want to throw my phone out the window of a moving car. You told me I was big, and I pretended that it was a compliment, for my own sanity. I pretended that my body was the rolling sea as that was the only positive metaphor I could come up with that flattered these curves I never asked for. I never asked for ******* that placed male attention on that isolated region of my body, I never asked for thighs or a stomach or a **** that I can feel ripple like waves and currents every time I walk, I never asked for this "unconventional" type of beauty, as it has been called by men and women alike. I never asked for a ****** or a ****** that seem to be the government's property rather than my own. But I can still use the desire to be called beautiful as my reason to be an ocean, a field, anything that has rolls but is still perceived as breathtaking. Forcing myself to believe that when he said he preferred the fat on my body rather than skin and bones he really meant that I was something straight out of an acrylic painting that some hotshot artist created in order to materialize women. I can convince myself that I was not his *****, when he continued to pick me to the bone and ignore my pleads for him to stop that he just loved me too much that he felt he had to show it through ****** advances. After all, is that not what we are teaching our boys? That women are mere *** objects that are to be used for male pleasure? I could go into my discourse on **** culture, but I will spare you the disjointedness and myself the agitation that goes along with it. I can just accept that this was his way of showing me that I am something to be treasured, and in order to be loved, I must be a possession. For a single moment, I believe that he saw my entire being as magnificent and illuminating and a rolling field or some sea green ocean off the coast of Australia. And that, to him, I was exotic and voluptuous and...beautiful. But that would not be true. I can keep lying to myself, saying that these men who harass me, even with simple off-handed compliments or comments on the way my chest rises or the way my hips flare out, really do think I am part of the water that trickles and ripples and ebbs and flows wonderfully down its path. But I am not a stream, nor a hill, nor any body of water. I am a person who is just as competent as every other man and woman on this planet beneath my feet. My hips are wide and my ******* exist because I have the blessing of being a woman, and that does not give you the right to judge them. I did not ask for your opinion on my legs or my stomach or my back or my waist. No body is better than another; they were all created to do similar human processes. Mine exists because I exist. I exist because I am here in this very specific place in time. And I am unbelievably here, my mind, my physical entities, my kind soul and my spirit are ever so present in this and every moment. I could choose to be here in a bubble that blocks out their harsh criticisms of everything about who I am, from the tips of my toenails to each and every follicle of hair on my scalp, but I refuse. I choose to live, unapologetically and undefined by these standards I cannot fit into. Trying to meet society's criteria will always lead to more failure and brokenness, as there will always be somebody alive on this earth who believes that I am nothing more significant than an ocean.