Cecily Kellogg

I’ll confess that I don’t actually find Bernie Sanders appealing as a presidential candidate; he’s too busy lecturing us.

My freshman year of East Lansing High School in 1981, I was the new girl. I’d recently moved to Michigan from New Mexico so my mother could get her PhD at Michigan State University. I was new, I was poor, I didn’t understand the local weather, and I kept scanning the horizon for mountains that weren’t there. I felt like the ultimate outsider.

When I saw the photos of the Curvy Barbie, I actually teared up. She is beautiful.

Last night I almost quit Facebook. I’d had yet another political argument, had my opinions and information dismissed as inaccurate, and I was just DONE. Fuck that social media noise. Who needs it, right? Sometimes social media feels like the toughest school playground, full of yelling and strange games and cliques.

Firmly middle-aged due to my 47 years, I’m fat and everything about me pretty much screams “Mom.” This means I no longer get sexually harassed. The closest I’ve gotten to being hit on in the last 10 or so years was that time a homeless man tried to touch my hair after I left the salon.

When it comes to the male gaze, I am now officially invisible.

Because this issue boils down completely to the male gaze, and how women are supposed to be pretty in a certain way so men will find them attractive, and that way must include long hair. Long hair that also requires a fair amount of time, expense, and effort to make it “pretty” in the right way.

My husband and my best friend were with me. They realized quickly something was wrong when the ultrasound tech moved us from one room to another. Then she sent in the doctor and we were told the news: one twin had died, probably a week or two earlier.

Shocked, I asked her about my alcoholism, and if she believed she could forgive me. “No,” she said. “I don’t think so.”

Here’s something nobody talks about when you’re trying to become pregnant: it becomes an obsession and takes over your life. There’s just something so incredibly frustrating about not being able to do this thing that EVERYONE else can do without a problem.

I was nearly six months pregnant when they died. They died because I was one of the 5% to 10% of women who suffer from preeclampsia. Worse, I was one of the rare ones who had early-onset preeclampsia, before the babies were viable (able to live outside the womb).