Magical Thinking for Girls
Science doesn’t give you power unless you already have it
Once upon a time, there was a boy.
We start with the boy because these stories always start with a boy. They start with a boy, and they end with a girl. She is always a victim in these kinds of stories, whether of happiness or unhappiness, violence or kindness, it doesn’t much matter. Sometimes, the girl is rescued, and sometimes, she is not.
So once upon a time, there was a boy. He liked, or didn’t like a girl, and so he would pinch her, and punch her, and throw things at her on the school bus. And every day, he came up with a new, ugly name for the girl. Every day he set the name in motion like spell; he let it bounce off the lockers in the halls until every unkind student picked it up and put it in their mouth. The boy was, in short, a bully, and the girl was unhappy. She told her parents, her teachers, her principal, but everywhere the response was the same: boys will be boys. So the girl decided that she didn’t like this story. She wanted to be in her own story, and so she decided to write it, with help from magic, with help from the stars.
Another way of telling it: When I was twelve years old, I was the girl, and I decided to make my own fate.
