body positivity

This week I have been thinking a lot about home, and how home shapes the way we feel about our bodies.

“You’re fat and ugly,” I’d hear, or, “Look at your stomach, it’s disgusting!” This wasn’t a neighborhood bully taunting me on my way to school — this is what I said to myself all day long, well into adulthood.

This is literally the cutest, happiest thing you will see all day.

In 2007, Kate Harding wrote, "I’ve noticed that a lot of the people I see writing confidently and persuasively about body acceptance are married or in solid long-term relationships… my god, it is hard to develop that confidence when you’re single and not happy about it, and the whole world is telling you the way to fix that is to make yourself prettier — and, of course, that a crucial component of becoming prettier is becoming as thin as you can possibly be, by any means necessary."

I think a lot of us are probably walking around with mild PTSD, anxiously calculating risk and making plans about what and who to avoid.... Even though I’m no longer technically walking the halls of junior high, I am living in a fitness-obsessed city that doesn’t feel as safe as it ought to considering almost everyone is over age 13.

LA-based plus-size model Simone Mariposa has sparked a social media chain of women who refuse to let the opinions of others dictate their clothing choices. “Every plus-size girl has had to bear the terrible brunt of being judged/policed for what we wear and how we wear it,” she tweeted.

Looking back at childhood photos now is bittersweet. In the moment the camera caught, I'm always smiling, but I wasn't always a happy child. I was fat-shamed almost daily.

It all started with a text from my roomie, Kori: "I am manifesting lying out, and getting some sun on my cooch."