When I was nineteen, I told my then-boyfriend a bold-faced lie: I can ski....

Somewhere along the line, I'd adopted the idea that it is easier to mold yourself to fit the expectation of others than it is to fall short.

This inclination found its way into friendships, relationships, conversations at the bar, conversations in the classroom. It took up residence in a far corner of my brain, in the form of one of those old-school catalogs, where it stored a variety of cues on who I was expected to be in a given situation. It wasn't until my senior year of college that I took note of it and started working hard to first subvert it, then evict it. But then I began to see it in others, mostly in other young women in my life: my younger sister, my roommates, my best friend. What was it that made us so afraid of dissatisfying expectations, so much that we were willing to alter ourselves instead?

My manuscript seeks to investigate this through a brief collection of fictional short stories centered around themes of feminine identity and perception. Superlative: Stories features stories that showcase the ways girls and women limit, shift, bend, and mold themselves to fit certain societal expectations. These stories explore the seldom acknowledged social phenomenon that it is often easier, or more comfortable, to change oneself to fit expectation than it is to disappoint....

It is my hope that this little collection of stories will not only serve as a critical examination of how we bend ourselves to fit expectation rather than resisting it, but also a wakeup call to those of us who do the former without even realizing it.... [I] invite you to take a close look at your own past and present and find those moments in which you abridged yourself to fit an expecation. When the opportunity to do so comes again (and it will), I challenge you to resist it.....