Like many others, my adolescence was demarcated by a series of important milestones that indicated the excitement of growing older: playground crushes, after-school trips downtown with friends, receiving my very own house key. But around the time I hit puberty, the milestones started to take a different, bleaker turn. I remember being catcalled for the first time, getting dress-coded at school for wearing running shorts on an 85-degree day and hearing stories of boys pressuring my friends into doing things they didn’t really want to do. It made me feel ashamed of my body and the space it took up, and scared of moving freely in the world around me. I craved something tangible that would allow me to reclaim a semblance of my autonomy.

Then, during my senior year of high school, just before

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