If you're confused by the way this piece winds around itself, you're not alone — and you're not wrong, because whatever case is being made falls victim to literary allusion about three-quarters through. "It is staggering how many wives are still sides, and how many sides become wives, only to realize they are still one of many. Will we ever be happy?" she writes. "Will the world ever accept all our cries and not just the ones of pop icons who blur the lines between reality and entertainment?"

Who is we? What do "we" want from the world? The more passionate the plea becomes, the more difficult it is to understand what's being asked.

Steffans-Short's piece culminates with the assertion that she is both Becky and Beyoncé, all at once — and that furthermore, so are all women. "I am the keeper of secrets, the betrayer of women, the confessor of my sins, the owner of my secrets, lies and salvations," she says in closing. "I have traded in my Scarlet A for a Scarlet Bey. Because we are all Becky with the good hair. Every last one of us."

It's poetically persuasive. But purple prose aside, the fact is this: We are not all Becky with the good hair. We are not all Beyoncé. And — as Steffans-Short admits in the beginning — no woman can be contained by either of these two terms. But that conviction is quickly abandoned when the writer starts to compartmentalize and dichotomize her whole adult life into how she has functioned in the context of her relationships with men.

Women have far more gradients than we are often given credit for. And so, if you have been cheated on, if you have ever stepped out on a partner, if you have ever wondered if you deserve better, if you have ever thought you deserved what you received — you still cannot be contained by a simple duality. We are not Becky or Beyoncé. That is not a sufficiently nuanced way to talk about the experiences of women. Life is messy. In the end, we are only ourselves.