Quote by Alfonsina Storni: “You want me white, you want me foam, you want me pearl.”

This is a devastating line from Storni's poem 'You Want Me White' — cataloguing the impossible, contradictory purity that men demanded of women. Pure like sea foam, rare like a pearl: these are fantasies that erase the actual woman and replace her with a male projection.

Storni published 'You Want Me White' (Tú me quieres blanca) in her 1919 collection El dulce daño. Argentina was experiencing rapid modernization and feminist organizing, with the first feminist congress having convened in Buenos Aires in 1910, yet women still lacked the vote and faced profound social double standards.

Argentine poet and feminist, one of the most important voices in early twentieth-century Latin American literature. Her poetry challenged the social constraints placed on women and dealt frankly with desire, suffering, and female autonomy in ways that were radical for her era.