It takes true courage to fight back like this and claim what is truly yours. This however can become tiring, being in the creative industries as a woman is often a struggle, with deeply rooted oppressive forces dangerously magnified upon individuals. Even in this struggle against them you often become pigeonholed into a character which doesn’t represent the holistic nature of you. This constricting pressure has also been applied in other ways by fans, who seem to push idealised philosophical ideas of who Sevdaliza is onto her. A claustrophobic experience. Perhaps even this narrative I have just painted is yet another part of the suffocating mythology that can surround an artist as they strive to just be.