This originally appeared on The Sex Positive Parent. Republished here with permission. The social order requires silence and looking away and not interfering, but when I see creepy men coming on to teenage girls, I say: Screw the social order. I just got home from my daily BART ride. I should be cooking dinner, but […]
If you choose to swear around your kids, that’s your call. But you won’t hear it from me. CEOs do it. Psychiatrists do it. Your mom does it. Myself, I can swear like a sailor. Hell, I’m married to a retired sailor. But I choose my outlets carefully for the outpouring of expletives that simmer […]
I, too, championed the Breast is Best philosophy, but what happens when what’s best for most isn’t an option for some? He came early. It wasn’t time yet. I hadn’t even shaved my legs. Keeping with the tradition of the second child treatment, we also hadn’t purchased a thing. What size would he be anyway? […]
What do you do when you realize you’ve spent most of your life searching for exactly what you have now? For the last six weeks, I’ve been on the road with my baby daughter, Charlotte, who will be five months old in early August. Babies, it turns out, travel with about 10 times their weight […]
When you worship someone, is it because you wish you could be that person? That was the third trip downstairs for food. I wasn’t hungry; I was angry, mostly with myself but not ready to admit it. I’d eaten a huge lunch at the Grove so this was just old learned behavior that was supposed […]
This originally appeared on Everyday Feminism. Republished here with permission. A woman’s body size isn’t just seen as a police-able “work in progress.” It’s also the golden ticket that allows us to follow our dreams. The concept of a single ideal of attractiveness has been ubiquitous in Western culture for decades. The beauty ideal has […]
I knew, like Winehouse, that I was No Good, but I insisted, as she did, on my own right to choose not to be. Both times I met Amy Winehouse, it struck me as amazing she hadn’t died already. She was 25, and I remember her dimunitive, emaciated, beehive-topped body reminding me of Marion Cotillard’s […]
You are going to mess up and you will have some regrets. But be the boss of your own body, and let your freak flag fly. My little sister and I were born 11 years apart, to the same two parents. Loving, kooky, birth-control-creative parents. When I was 12, I could be found with a […]
