confidence.
Life is more complicated.
What won was choice.
Maya chose the swimsuit.
Gwen ignored her right to choose how her image would be used.
We responded by giving that choice back.
That is what I wish I had understood when Maya was little.
I spent years wanting to make her confident.
I thought confidence was the goal.
It wasn’t.
Autonomy was.
She did not need to love every inch of herself every morning.
She needed to know every inch still belonged to her.
She could cover it.
Show it.
Photograph it.
Refuse photographs.
Seek treatment.
Decline treatment.
Explain.
Refuse to explain.
Those choices were hers.
The night Gwen insulted her, I was furious because my sister had been
cruel.
But cruelty was only half the problem.
Gwen had decided Maya’s body belonged to the audience.
First as marketing.
Then as an inconvenience.
When the photographs might help her business,
