I want my daughter to learn how to follow such a thrill. Last fall, at a conference in Flagstaff, Arizona, I sat in a dim hotel room with two dear friends from my graduate creative writing program and a professor of said program, who had joined us via Skype. Put a few cans of Pabst in […]
I’ve always evaluated women on their physical appearance, but I feel guilty about it. Maybe if I was the one subjected to the female gaze, a sense of justice would be restored. “Show us your dick!” “We want to see penis!” I stood on a stage (twice) and gave a bar full of hooting and hollering […]
I feel like I’m racing my baby. I never thought I’d be someone who would be sad about her age. As one of the oldest in my grade, I had consistently met birthdays with a giddy, head-on mentality. Being oldest meant doing everything first. I was first to drive. First to vote. First to (legally) […]
As much as the conversation about body image has spread to men, society saves its most vicious scorn for women. I think it was sixth grade when a tougher kid made me do the “truffle shuffle,” in the gym locker room. The shuffle originates from The Goonies movie where a chubby kid shakes his belly for […]
Having an abortion was one of the most difficult decisions I’ve ever had to make, but it was the best decision for me, at that time in my life. In November 2012, I was living the dream—literally. In 2009, I had left my small-town life in the suburbs of Philadelphia to live and work in […]
I just consider myself a woman in the absence of a uterus and ovaries. While it could be easy to lie to myself and pretend I’m just a “normal” cis-gender woman (a person whose self-identity conforms with the gender they were born as), I know it’s not really the case. My chromosome makeup is 46 XY; […]
Life, from start to finish, is a collaborative endeavor. At the university in Boston where I teach, we’ve entered the period of the academic year that I call The Panic. As April dovetails into May, nary an hour passes without an email from a student in need. They need extensions. They need extra credit. They […]
No one else has accompanied you through every excruciating moment of your life; your body has served as witness to it all. It has taken me my entire life to realize I should be ashamed of how ungrateful I’ve been to my body, how wrong it was that I did not appreciate all of the […]
