Fatma

My 15th birthday is coming closer and closer and I’m honestly so scared. I’m growing up so fast and the years are going by so quickly. In school, I’m treated like an adult. At home, I’m treated like a baby. I don’t know what I am. I’m already confused because I never see Muslims represented properly in the media. I don’t know who I am. When I’m in school observing my surroundings, I think about what the people in my class will be doing in 10 years. It’s really weird imagining some of the bullies as regular, functioning members of society.

I have this daydream where I’m being interviewed by Jimmy Fallon and he asks me about what I was like as a teenager. I recall memories as if my life was all a dream and none of these awkward, repetitive years impacted my adult life. In the daydream I’m an adult who has forgotten how I felt when I was younger. I tell myself that I was just a sad loner who only related to characters in movies and TV shows. In this daydream interview, I talk about the popular kids tripping me over in the hallway, and how people made fun of my hair and taste in music. Jimmy and I laugh, and I tell the Roots how much I love their song “Step Into the Realm.” And somewhere in the world, there’s a Turkish-Cypriot girl who can’t sleep and who’s watching my interview on TV—and she feels that there is hope for her to be whatever she wants to be.

That’s why representation is so important to me. I want to begin this cycle where underrepresented people are represented fully. I’m sick of worrying about if my white friends are thinking I’m the token serious Muslim girl just because I care about problems that Muslims face day to day. But it must be natural for them to ignore these problems, because they don’t have to face them every day. But I and a lot of other minorities do: Muslims, foreign people, black/brown people, LGBTQI people. I want our voices to be heard, so I’m going to do everything to be the representation that I’ve never saw. ♦