Having a bigger body while getting laid and getting pleasure from it seems to be too much for the poor dudebros of the world. Two nights ago, I checked my filtered mail on Facebook. Lo and behold, this was in my inbox: First: I have no idea who this person is (a person of the male gender) […]
There is no fairy godmother of fat girls. But there should be. I would volunteer, just so no other 12-year-old girl would have to spend 30 years of her life thinking something was wrong with her. My entire life, my weight has been an issue. Not for me, but for other people. Especially men. I don’t […]
Now that I have children of my own, I’m determined to do what I can to inoculate them from the toxic culture of body hatred that surrounds them. When I was 16 years old, I weighed about as much as a 10-year-old. A 10-year-old girl, that is. I was a boy with an eating disorder. […]
In the collective imagination of American culture, if a fat person works out, it’s because she’s trying to become a thin person. And I’m not. Here’s my big secret: I work out five days a week. Not that shocking, right? Are you waiting for me to get to the scandalous part, like where I steal […]
No matter how many anti-fat shaming and body acceptance posts I read and share, the feeling of inadequacy returns. A Victoria’s Secret model mocks me from my refrigerator door. Her stomach, smooth and flat, taunts me as I glare at it. How I wish I could take a butcher knife and just slice off the […]
Widespread anti-fat prejudice typically stems from misconceptions about health, weight, and body positivity, and negatively affects millions of people every day. At the bottom of nearly every article celebrating body diversity, you will likely find some version of the following comments: “Aren’t you promoting an unhealthy lifestyle?” “I’m all about confidence, but this is just […]
I refuse to buy into the idea that a person’s worth is dependent upon a number. My daughter Ruthie is 3. She is a healthy toddler. Her brain is perfect—a neurologist confirmed that in 2012 when she was exhibiting some strange growth patterns that needed to be checked out. She is funny and incredibly smart […]
When an icon like Jennifer Aniston laments that a perfectly healthy, thin body is too heavy for her liking, we, as a society, have a problem. Accepting my body has never been easy for me. Even at my smallest, I saw what I believed were imperfections: the dimpling on my right hip, the skin that […]
