Summary
Highlights
Lozada-Oliva opens by addressing the phenomenon of 'old white men' dictating how she, and presumably other women, should speak, criticizing their interruptions and their dismissal of her speech patterns as ruining the English language.
She highlights the societal pressure to conform to a 'hyper-masculine' communication style, where women are told they have a 'confidence problem' if they don't speak up, and their natural expressions like 'likes' and 'umms' are put on a 'waitlist'.
Lozada-Oliva provocatively suggests that speaking in questions might be a defense mechanism, a response to constantly being cut off. She reclaims feminine speech patterns, likening 'likes' to kneepads and 'umms' to knives, transforming them into tools of protection and empowerment rather than signs of weakness.
The poem concludes with a powerful call to embrace uncertainty and 'softness' as a form of resistance. She encourages listeners to 'stick flowers' in the 'punctuations mark guns' of authority and to transform the act of speaking with 'like totally whatever' into a profound assertion of self and voice.