hauntedjaeger:

I guess it’s time to blacklist Bucky Barnes too, because that “what if a little girl recognizes him at the Smithsonian exhibit, because girls can have heroes too” post is just pissing me off now because what about girls whose heroes are girls, is that fucking allowed ever or does literally everything have to be about Bucky Barnes including the admiration and aspiration of young women? 

What about the teenager who recognizes Natasha at the mall because Black Widow is not exactly S.H.I.E.L.D.’s best-kept secret after New York and a CHI straightener and a hoodie is not going to change that, and her first instinct is to elbow her friends and maybe go ask for an autograph, but then she notices the pace and the smile and the perpetually-scanning gaze and realizes Black Widow is on a job, holy frick, cover ops in Fashion Centre at Pentagon City, wait until absolutely no one hears about this, but she puts herself on a course that will pass Romanoff and gives her the tiniest of nods, and Black Widow winks at her, and she walks on and feels like a superspy herself for the next handful of days until the S.H.I.E.L.D. filedump, when she stays up and reads and reads and reads, and later when she’s writing her term paper, and then later when she’s sitting in her Declassified Operations elective, and later still when she’s across the table as Director Hill reviews her qualifications, she is thinking, “I met Black Widow in the mall and kept her secret; there is nothing I can’t do”?

What about her?