Speculation, specially in writing or design, can be a synonym of freedom — it sets you free from the things you have around you, in front of you, the dull reality of the passing of time, the bombardment of information on the news. When you speculate about something, the speculation allows you to float above reality, with an infinite sky of possibilities, you can see what the future might or might not bring. The freedom of letting yourself not be constrained by only reality or present is constantly stimulating, you’re playing games with yourself to see how far can you take the world you created, how expanded this universe can be. And yet speculation, like no other writing I’ve done, is the one that pulls you the most to your present. While speculating on another reality, you're perpetually tangled in your own — in order to create another world, all the beliefs you have about this one are challenged. Writing a (speculative) fiction piece for this thesis was a big challenge when it comes to defining myself as a designer, a “writer” and a feminist. It was, however, rather easy to take on the topic and to decide this is what I was going to talk about. I thought that my thesis should, in a way, almost summarise or at least include a big part of my identity as a designer and as a design student in this Academy. Ever since the first year, I was the feminist. I’ve taken on that name and wear it with pride, so it doesn’t come to a surprise that I am writing these words at the end of my path in the glass box. I am unsure about many things in myself, but my feminist identity was never one I have questioned before. And I was not even worried about it, since the topic of my thesis is not necessarily feminism itself, but the relationships between love and work, in a feminist context/lens. But these glasses I’ve put on to write this story revealed themselves as blurrier than expected, since the writing ended up confronting different views of modern ideas of feminism, and ways feminism is explored today in our screens, in the businesses we support, in our statement t-shirts. And at the same time I was confronting different ways to be a feminist, I was also trying to advocate for sisterhood, for not pointing fingers, for love. But love of what? What is it that actually want to say? The times I struggled the most, I felt angry that I couldn't be more precise with my own values, that I couldn't define this or that character. By not knowing what words to put in their mouths, I was failing to put them in myself. Now I’ve acknowledged that this struggle gives me and my story another layer of complexity alongside the narrative. I’ve accepted the more hidden narratives that lie behind. I’ve realised that in every discourse or argument there is always a place of comfort that one likes to come back to, a refuge of words and ideologies. This story took away the rock that I would go and hide in, forcing me to stand in the discomfort of the cold. I am now glad to be in the cold sometimes, it is quite fun.

Writing this story also gave me an opportunity to bring into a thesis writing elements of humour and erotica, with which I had experimented before and could now put it in a bigger context, one that was much more my own. I can remember when the seed of this ‘world’ was planted. In a class on erotic fiction, about two years ago. It was the time when Donald Trump was elected. I wrote a short story involving the now President and candidate Hillary Clinton, set in the last debate in Las Vegas. In this story, I mock them both by writing about a sexual affair that ends up with Clinton winning the campaign. When I decided to take on Sheryl’s story for my thesis, I knew immediately that I wanted to give a ‘wink’ to I’m With Her. Some decisions involved research, in understanding the relationship between love and neoliberalism, economy and labour: topics I was not so familiar with but enjoyed unpacking in the context of my story and of feminism. A big part of the research was reading speculative fiction and understanding the genre and making it familiar for myself. I studied Sheryl’s ways, in TED talks, interviews, pictures, magazine covers and writings. Other decisions were more intuitive and free of explanation, as some absurdity was asked by the genre and the setting. The one of only including women, for instance, came natural and I didn't feel the need to explain it. Do we have to explain when a story features only male characters? Even though this story features characters that are inspired by real people, such as Hillary Clinton and Sheryl Sandberg — and in a certain extent, myself — this is not an attempt to paint an accurate portrait of them. It was fascinating to create a fictional character for someone who already exists — and having this “part truth” gave me a ground to land my feet on when the flight got too high. After writing this story, I don’t know which kind of feminist I am, if there is a kind. I want to be them all.