Cecily Kellogg

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

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).

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

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 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.

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.

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

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.

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.

As reports of racially based harassment have increased over the past week since the election of Trump — even here in my liberal bastion of urban Ph