This column was going to be about Qandeel Baloch all along. It was going to muse about how a small-town girl turned the narrative of her life around, transforming from the person she was born as into the person she wanted to be. Fauzia Azeem struggled, resisted, walked out on a terrible marriage, gave up her only child—and became Qandeel Baloch of the expertly applied eyeliner, the outlandish outfits and the aspirational drawl many girls affect when they want to sound more sophisticated. It’s a story like many others—from Jay Gatsby to Marilyn Monroe, literature and culture is full of famous people, real and fictional, who reinvented themselves because they were restless and hungry and wanted more from their lives. But like many of them, their star has been a doomed one, because it seems that society will always be hell-bent on reminding you of your place, and like Jay Gatsby, used by all but ultimately friendless and alone, Qandeel Baloch was jerked sharply back into her place in the most violent and final of ways.

Photos of Baloch from her life as Fauzia show her dressed with care, standing far apart from her husband and holding herself tightly together. The difference between the two is so obvious: here is a young woman who is well-groomed and confident in her stance, looking the camera straight on. Her husband stands indifferently apart, blandly looking off centre. Baloch claimed her husband was illiterate; he may well have been. It is altogether too common for intelligent, modern-minded girls to be married to illiterate conservative men of the same class, because girls like that have thoughts and ambitions far beyond their station and what better way to contain those than by marriage to the most conveniently available cousin or neighbour? It’s no wonder Baloch left him. It couldn’t have been easy, but she managed it. She took her son with her, but in that depressing situation of girls who aren’t allowed educations, was financially so insecure she had to send her son back to his father. Giving up a child is the hardest choice any mother has to make, and she chose her son’s well-being over her own desire to have him close. Not once did she use that to make herself sound like a martyr.

In interviews Baloch never mentioned being helped by anyone. It sounds like she was on her own from the start, and in many ways she continued to be. You see, everyone’s problem with Qandeel wasn’t that she was provocative. The problem was that she was unstoppable. The problem was that she was a person who refused, at all points in her life, to be pinned down by anyone. She hated her life as Fauzia Azeem so she made a new one, and all anyone could do was hate her for doing exactly what she wanted. She was sued by men, always carping mean little men, for things like insulting the Baloch by choosing the word for her new name. Thousands of people followed her on social media, and simultaneously supported online campaigns to have her Facebook page taken down. Of course we don’t believe that wearing skimpy clothes and having a crush on Imran Khan is such a big deal, because otherwise we wouldn’t be watching Indian films or dancing to item numbers at mehndis either. In the music video Qandeel Baloch recently starred in, she was dressed more or less like anyone is in rap music videos. We couldn’t get over it, even though we’re streaming the same kind of video all the time. Amber Rose is ok, Nicki Minaj is fine, but Qandeel Baloch just can’t be allowed.

Our hypocrisy finally caught up with Qandeel. Nobody has tried to shoot the singer of ‘Ban’, but the model featured in the video is dead. The point should never be reduced to beysharami: the woman was bold, she was sexy, she was unapologetic about it. That was her great transgression: for taking control of the routine commodification the female body is subjected to all the time anyway. In a society where one can’t even sell an ice lolly without involving a woman, Qandeel Baloch took ownership of her body and used it as she saw fit. Instead of being a victim—that position of powerlessness—she was the hero of her own life, and that suddenly made her a shameless woman. And that is what drove everyone mental about her. She didn’t give a toss. In one of her last interviews she acknowledged freely that her clothes were “cheap” in the Ban video, that she doesn’t know how to dance. But she added, look how confident I am. And she was. She was the most confident, and that’s what made her brave. She believed in herself, whatever that agenda was. Not only that, she supported her family, she was home for Eid. That doesn’t sound like the behavior of a woman estranged from her relatives. And this is how she was repaid: strangled in her parent’s home by her brother. Because at the end of the day, she was a woman who wouldn’t be tamed, couldn’t be shamed by anything and was making money whether anyone liked her or not. And that is why Qandeel Baloch was important. Not because she taught us how to be fahaash, but because she held a mirror up to us. Because she broke all the rules. Because in a man’s world, she went in like a man would: assessing, deliberating and taking what she wanted. And what’s truly indecent is that ultimately, she was punished for it. She was punished for thinking she had a right to life on her own terms, that she could be anything but Fauzia Azeem. This is no honour killing. This is an ego killing.