Early on I learned that if I could wear the right clothes, look the right way, at least in part, I could pass as normal. When my best friend Emily was pregnant with her first child, she was very sick, most notably during a Globe Theater performance, which she valiantly sat through in order to […]
Because black women, especially dark-skinned black women, deviate furthest from European beauty standards, they are more likely to experience self-hate, distorted body image, depression, and eating disorders. Unless you’re in possession of an uncanny confidence that isn’t directly proportional to how closely your aesthetic matches a European standard of beauty (in which case, congratulations and […]
Do we really want our daughters to grow up thinking they’re not good enough because of their size? Fatphobia, or the bizarre fixation a good chunk of our society has on being terrified of becoming/being/seeing/touching anyone or anything that has to do with fatness, hurts everyone. As someone who identifies as being a fat woman, […]
I like not having to strive for anything regarding my body other than basic maintenance in the hopes of keeping it running a little longer. I like the freedom to ignore even that. When it’s only us in the room, only fat women, someone might quietly say, like a guilty confession: “I’m trying really hard […]
Being touched, even by a doctor, made me feel ashamed. Having sex? That was even worse. “I don’t know why I’m getting so emotional right now,” I said as I wiped tears away from the face. “I don’t know, either,” Dr. O’Neil shrugged as she handed me a tissue. I tried to get myself together […]
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 […]
Countless hours, days, weeks, months, and years spent wondering if I am good enough. I haven’t shaved my legs for a few weeks. It wasn’t intentional. I just haven’t made the time in the morning to get it done. There is a part of me that wants to just say I’m done. I’m going to […]
If we—as women with diverse body types, skin tones, and abilities—get to define for ourselves what beauty and sexiness look like, then the power will no longer rest with those who pad their fortunes with our self-loathing. I’m one of those women who has spent most of my life in and out of cycles of […]
She was a beautiful woman, long legs, lovely face, curvy figure—why couldn’t she see it? Why couldn’t she see beauty in me? My grandmother’s funeral was last week, in a small town in Illinois where a gaggle of sad looking geese huddled together for warmth on a frozen lake in front of a church on […]
