I was not a super cute kid, and my awkward phase lasted from second grade to sometime around my sophomore year of college. In elementary school I was chubby with scraggly blond hair. In high school I had low self-esteem and a pretty intense case of dandruff. When I was younger getting called fat and […]
For a period of time after I broke up with the man I’d been dating for four years, all I wore was black. I mourned the relationship by donning a widow’s wardrobe. Shapeless t-shirts, a wool sweater with a stretched out collar, an old pair of ballet slippers. I couldn’t imagine any other combination, besides […]
I thought I’d dealt with most of my body image issues before I started dating my current boyfriend. But during the three years we’ve been together, he’s taught me a lot about size, fatness and self-care. How? By being fat and unapologetic. My boyfriend weighs over 300 pounds, and one of the things I appreciated […]
You know that moment, where you’re gripping some of your side fat in the bath, and you just ate all of the leftover spaghetti at once, with pesto and tomato sauce and grated cheese and, weirdly, liverwurst, and you’re thinking, Tomorrow I will go to the gym. And then I’ll go every day after that, for […]
A recent poll found that all of our pre-work primping and preening doesn’t hold up for long. Of the 2,000 women surveyed, 10 percent thought they needed to fix up their hair and makeup after an hour in the office, 40 percent felt completely “bedraggled” by lunch, and 43 percent felt like a completely different […]
When The Hairpin published a Guide To Eating Very Particular Feelings, we laughed, but it was a slightly bitter laugh, a nervous “Oh my God this is my life” chuckle. For those of us who eat our feelings or struggle with body image issues (so sadly, many of us), the holidays are especially treacherous times […]
When I was in sixth grade, I’d advanced far enough along in my math studies to be in pre-Algebra. I went to magnet school in Fort Worth, Texas, with a bunch of other smart kids who had tested into the advanced program, but when I walked into Mr. Zoromski’s math class, I felt suddenly out […]
You only live once, as far as I know, so you should do something different with your hair. When I cut all of my hair off, women were like, “You’re so brave! I could never do that!” I really didn’t feel particularly brave. Actually, I’m kinda a wimp. But I looked around and noticed that […]
The other day, I was having lunch with a 65-year-old woman who was on a strict diet. She told me she needed to lose 10 pounds before she would feel like a real person again. She wasn’t letting herself buy any new clothes until she dropped a couple sizes. She loved fashion, but she wanted […]
