I'm really, really glad you said that last part.

I grew up in the Jewish community. In addition to the images I saw on television and in magazines that glorified skinny white women, I saw my own community embrace blonde white passing women over women like me, again and again.

I was smart, very beautiful, athletic, strong, creative-but again and again, I found myself overlooked in favor of Jewish women who were more assimilated, more white looking, more comfortable to WASP culture. I was marginalized in my own community.

I'm still fighting those early messages of rejection. They came from my family, towards my mother and me. They came from my mother, in her self-hatred.

Now they come from Jewish men, who long for me because I represent our historical past, but reject me in favor of an assimilated, polished, alien future.