Melissa A. Fabello

Uh, in case you haven’t noticed, the body acceptance movement has a bit of a body rejection problem. Namely, anyone who isn’t a thin, white, able-bodied, straight, middle class, cisgender woman gets left out of the movement altogether — which, in my opinion, isn’t very accepting.

“I don’t have a problem,” I repeated, this time with my voice raised. And then, spitting defiance, “You’re just jealous.”

5. Nervous Breakdowns Are Probably Inevitable. No one likes falling apart. It’s embarrassing and messy and a sign that you’ve gone too far and need to reel yourself back in. And if you practice self-care both as prevention and intervention, you might be able to keep these crying fits at bay for a long time — but eventually, school stress catches up with you.

And as much as I’m a Swifty, I’m a feminist first (a white one, by the way, at that), and I’m not here for any kind of feminism that would excuse, for instance, Taylor’s misunderstanding that race is irrelevant in pop culture politics (a la the feud with Nicki Minaj that never was).

And so I slid the scale to the back of my closet, started freely eating doughnuts when I craved doughnuts, and simply donated the jeans that stopped fitting instead of holding out hope for them.

I was jealous of the dog. “That dog gets to be so thin,” I tried to explain, tearfully, to my partner, “and it doesn’t even have to try. I’ll never be that thin.”

As much as I can appreciate any excited person exclaiming that they love “FEMINISM,” that doesn’t really leave me with much to go off of when considering whether or not they’d be a good fit for a position.

What I’ve (amazingly) learned is that if I eat what I want, when I want, and as much of it as I want (what my stomach wants, not my eyes, which are two separate measurements), my digestion regulates itself again.

And it’s that last one that really irks me: that most people — and especially most women’s — new year’s resolutions center on dieting and weight loss as the key to happiness.