My only regret is that I wasted nearly 40 years trying to bend my body to an imaginary idea of perfection. I’ve always had a complicated relationship with my body—sometimes, it’s been too fat, sometimes it’s been too thin. But no matter how I look in a swimsuit in a given year, the one thing […]
Because soon enough, the world will tell them differently. There’s a trend in parenting to compliment our children’s abilities rather than their appearance. A recent Daily Telegraph article states, “Parents should stop telling their children they look beautiful because it places too much emphasis on appearance and can lead to body confidence issues later in life.” Despite my foibles […]
Body shaming is just one more thing in this big, scary world that I can’t protect her from, but damned if I’ll stop trying. My toddler was twirling in her tutu bathing suit while I shimmied into my plus-sized polka dot bikini. Since my 2-year-old is still in the phase where she finds it socially […]
Was there something inside of me that just didn’t feel like being devoured anymore? Or was there something inside of me that believed I was no longer devourable? I got my first Barbie doll just before my 43rd birthday. Away on a girls’ weekend, I made the late-night fireside admission that I had not been […]
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 […]
Over the almost 40 years that I’ve been on this planet, I’ve absorbed the message — whether it’s about my hair, pale skin, or the size of particular body parts — that I’m too much. I was an unusually hairy kid. For me, it was the thick, black hair that blanketed my milky white legs […]
At the end of every conversation with her, every word of encouragement, note about her intellect, her creativity, her place in my world, is the undertone of fear that I will raise a daughter like me. Once, my 6-year-old daughter told me that her friend was better than she was. Not that he was better […]
While there are broad aspects of male privilege that male children may experience, there is a high price to pay for being bad at being a boy. Recently, in an auto parts store in Columbus, Ohio, I was called a “faggot” for the first time as a newly out, non-binary femme. I am a 600-pound […]
Why is it that we associate revealing our bodies with liberation and covering it up with oppression? Sixteen-year-old Je’Nan Hayes of Maryland recently had to sit out a basketball game because she wears a hijab (headscarf), and according to a rarely enforced rule, was required to provide prior documentation that she did so for religious […]
Beauty and body fat percentage are not mutually exclusive. I have a love/hate relationship with my body. Some days I celebrate it for the goddess vessel it is and others I feel betrayed by it, want to light it on fire, and run it over in the middle of the street. Living with a series […]
There are still mornings I look in the mirror and struggle not to tell myself that no one could ever want me. It is exceedingly difficult to come to terms with your own sexual identity, in any respect. While sexual exploration is by no means the taboo it used to be, it’s still considered “alternative” […]
Sexting can offer a safer, gentler space to practice overcoming ingrained shame. The first time I was asked to talk dirty was in my early college days, while giving my first long-term boyfriend oral sex. He presumably wanted me to say dirty shit with the same mouth I was using to do dirty shit all […]
