Having a female body is especially hard. Having a fat one is even harder. I wrote this piece after the election, but I don’t want to talk about politics. We’ve had enough of that this week. Just this morning I was told by a man on Facebook that I was “extremely arrogant” for expressing my […]
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 […]
When you focus on dieting and weight loss, you’re feeding the cultural nonsense. I’ve sat with hundreds of clients who are breaking out of the diet/binge trap and developing a healthy relationship with food and their body. But then they have to go out into a fatphobic, food-obsessed world where their friends, family, colleagues, acquaintances, healthcare providers, and […]
Girls don’t simply decide not to have a voice. We teach them. I think I was 12 years old when I set my first one. My first New Year’s resolution. Always being a bit heavier as a kid, losing weight was at the top of my list when January 1 rolled around. My resolutions would […]
I will keep in mind that the goal of body positivity shouldn’t make me feel pressured. And if it does, then maybe I should go for body neutrality instead. To be honest, I’ve yet to solidify a New Year’s tradition that feels good deep in my bones. For most of my life, the holiday was […]
A wise friend once told me “The story of your weight is boring to everyone but you.” This morning my almost 6-year-old son watched as I tried to manipulate my digital scale to do what I want. “Can I get on?” he asked. “Yes, but just a minute,” I said grumpily, as I tilted a little […]
You do not want your daughter to fear her natural self or any other self she chooses. You do not want your sons to closet and shame women. She wants to know if it hurts. Your daughter, on her way to 3, extends a finger, hesitant. “Is it a boo boo?” You are cuddled together on […]
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 […]
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 […]
Aside from a small amount of teasing in school, most of the insults I’d gotten about my body had come from my own brain. Like many women, weight has been an issue for me for most of my life. I can’t say it’s been on my mind for as long as I can remember, because I […]
Just because I do not represent someone’s ideal of beauty, they are not allowed, by their actions, to negate me. If you hang around my mother and me long enough, you will hear the Onion Ring Story. I honestly don’t know why she tells it. Maybe she thinks it’s a cute childhood anecdote that should […]
Curvy is just who I am. I have the same kind of body that my mother had, that my grandmothers had. And I take good care of it. I can’t tell you exactly how it happened. I wish I could tell you there is a magic solution out there that could make all women accept […]
