Bodies

Weddings can be anxiety-inducing and filled with dread for those of us that don’t drink. Attending weddings as a sober person can often feel lonely and about as fun as having dental work without novocain.

The thing is, we soak in these body-judging lessons from a very young age, before we even know how damaging they are. Some of the messages are implicit, like when we see a fat girl getting made fun of on the playground (or, for many of us, when we are the fat girl getting made fun of on the playground) and learn that being fat is not just wrong, it’s a punishable offense.

At first, I felt like an abandoned ten-year-old, dropped off at a remote summer camp—with the extra added attraction of no cell phone reception or Wi-Fi. I thought the hardest part of the weekend was going to be picking out a robe. Boy, was I wrong!

S.L.U.T. (single life under thirty) is officially over and you’re still banging your vibrator. Well, doesn't this suck? Who was prepared for your 30s being so super-lame? Your hair is turning gray, your boobs are getting wrinkles, and what the hell is this on your face? No. Way. Chin. Hair. Not to mention you can no longer drink without getting a hangover.

"If I am holding an amber beer in my hand, I am not talking about naptimes. If I hear shop from your lips, I am ordering you three more martinis and getting you shitfaced..."

If you're a woman, in or near your forties, and a perpetual people-pleaser, I have good news for you! You're about to enter a new stage of psychological wisdom and maturity. The people-pleasing that ate away at your sanity is going to become a thing of the past.

There was no reason why I should have miscarried, or so I thought. I found a thousand reasons to blame myself. Had I gotten enough rest? Was I getting enough nutrition? As my mind searched for answers and concocted a thousand reasons as to why this happened to me, I started to slowly fall into a depression.

"Childbearing [is] barbaric and pregnancy should be abolished," wrote radical feminist theorist Shulamith Firestone in The Dialectic of Sex.