Strawberry Knees

Evelyn didn't mind being a girl. She knew what it meant to be a girl of her age; wear pink and frilly everything. Love unicorns and poke boys with sticks. Enjoy candy, cartoons, and sleepovers with other girls.
She was unaware--at the gentle, pigtailed age of nine--of all the obligatory accoutrement that she would eventually grow into. At this age, she was not yet familiar with what "patriarchy" means, who Anais Nin was, and what expectations society had in store for her teen-aged and adult selves. Pencil skirts. Spider eyes. Celine Dion. An explicitly specified sense of sexuality.
But these qualities of womanhood were so surface and she questioned much more often the elemental differences between boys and girls. Cosmetic surgery and drag can make anyone anything, so she knew that physical appearance wasn't it. Give a man some duct tape and a woman some duct tape and they can switch roles.
Instead, she thought, while riding her bicycle, if only girls liked riding their bicycles. If only girls sometimes trip up, get a shoelace caught in the cogs, or glance away when eyes should be bullets forward, and scrape and chafe their skin against pavements, dirts, and cool spring grasses. If only girls beat their chests and yawped in pain and pride for their strawberry knees and busted anklets.