My parents like to tell this story from my preschooler years: if anyone called me “cute”, “beautiful” or “adorable” I would place my hands squarely on my hips, stick out my lower jaw in defiance and shoot back a glaring, “I’m not (cute/beautiful/adorable), I’m Julia!”. Whenever they repeat the story, I mentally high-five three-year-old me, because I intrinsically understood then that I am the curator of my own identity. It is a lesson I would spend most of my teenage and adult life relearning.