By Katherine D., TIWP Student

I’m making souffle pancakes on a Sunday morning. It always takes me three hours but it’s still pretty fun even though I end up eating the batter when I get too hungry. My pancakes always taste good but they never look quite as perfect as the ones I see on the AI-generated recipe video I’m watching. Those are smooth and shaped into perfect cylinders. Mine have bumps and dents and small brown splotches. They’re always crooked in some way or another.

My sister walks into the kitchen and says, “that one has a dent on the side.”

It’s almost like I asked her for her opinion on my pancakes.

Anyway, that’s the annoying thing about other people. You can never win at anything in life perfectly because there will always be something wrong with your pancakes, your hair, your outfit, your personality, the way you hold your pencil when you write. Being a “good girl” means you’re boring, too docile, easy to take advantage of. Being a “bad girl” means you’re unruly, too rebellious, and untrustworthy. People can’t control you so instead they judge you and try to make you feel ashamed of who you are.

So what the hell do they want from you?

You’ll never fit into that cookie cutter, no matter how hard you try to chip away parts of yourself. You’ll never be able to reshape yourself into that last missing puzzle piece that you’ve been desperately searching for.

AND your pancakes will always still have dents on the sides.

But they always taste real freaking good.