Before we knew to hate her, we were taught to judge her.

We learned which women were “good” and which women were “too much.”

Too loud.

Too confident.

Too sexual.

Too revealing.

Too comfortable in their own skin.

We learned that a woman's body could somehow tell us something about her character. That modesty meant morality. That showing too much skin meant lacking self-respect. That a “good woman” should know when to cover up, when to be desirable, when to be quiet, and exactly how much of herself the world was allowed to see.

But who taught us that?

And more importantly, why did we believe them?

In Before We Knew to Hate Her, writer and boudoir photographer Destin Green explores the rules women inherit long before they are old enough to question them: rules about beauty, bodies, sexuality, motherhood, aging, confidence, marriage, morality, and worth.

Through deeply personal stories from her own life and lessons gathered from more than eight years photographing hundreds of women, Destin traces those messages back to childhood, to the comments we remember decades later, the mirrors we learned to fear, the photographs we avoided, the approval we chased, and the voices we eventually mistook for our own.

This isn't a book about convincing yourself you're beautiful every time you look in the mirror.

It's about something deeper.

Your body is not evidence of your morality.

Your beauty is not evidence of your worth.

And being seen does not make you less deserving of respect.

Maybe the woman underneath all those rules was never the problem.

Maybe we just met her before we knew to hate her.

And maybe it's time to meet her again.