When the song was over, I collapsed onto the floor, out of breath and smiling. “Uh, no, thanks,” I said to my husband Ethan, removing his hand from my waist, “I feel gross.” It was Saturday afternoon, a time in the past when we would have made love, but I had just breastfed our son […]
What you put on your body is your business. I have been fat every day of my life since I was born. I’m not just talking a few pounds overweight. I’m talking I-gained-a-pound-in-the-hospital-when-I-was-born fat. For real. And I’ve always been OK with being fat. I’ve never allowed the fact that my body has more fat […]
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 […]
I strip for the women who hate their bodies. I strip for the women who think their thighs are too big, their asses too small, or their bellies too jiggly. I don’t look like her: Or her, either: I am actually the complete opposite of these women. I’m brown, I’m thick/heavy/curvy/voluptuous/fat, and any other word that […]
How can I possibly think about being naked around others, when it’s so difficult to confront my own nudity even when I am by myself? When I was 5 years old, my mother would take me to our local Jewish Community Center to go swimming. Afterward, we’d rush to the locker room for a hot shower before […]
If my body in a swimsuit offends my fellow beachgoers, screw ’em. The constant reminders that there are ONLY THREE MONTHS LEFT before bikini season reminds me of last summer when I was packing for a trip to the beach. I was a little worried about the effect my un-toned body would have on fellow […]
When I visited a nude beach, I realized the only person making me uncomfortable was me. I lifted my shirt over my head, took a deep breath, and pulled the strings of my bathing suit top loose. Immediately, my mind began to race. What if people stare at me? I wish I would’ve spent more […]
Dear Dana is a bi-weekly advice column for humans who engage in romantic relationships. Please send your dilemmas, issues, conundrums, assumptions, conflicts, anxieties, worriments, obstacles, complications, predicaments, queries, questions, and any other synonyms for “problems” to deardana@rolereboot.org. Dear Dana: I’m 35 and single. I’ve been trying my hand at online dating for the last year and […]
I have seen beautiful women with shapely, healthy bodies stuffed into Spanx, hiding this very precious piece of themselves—their bellies. It was my last full day on vacation down the Jersey Shore—a vacation where I indulged on piping hot donuts and buckets of fries on more than one occasion. My partner and I decided to […]
It’s 2015, and I’d like to know why we still believe that a woman can’t be both smart and desirable. It’s late January and while navigating a sea of new course syllabi, doctoral applications, and conference research, I haven’t been the best at keeping up with recent news. What little media trickles through the stacks […]
